My Sweet Variable
by LifeInTheSnow
Summary: He white-knuckles his pen, dragging a line of ink across the page. I can guess which passage he's marking: "All things truly wicked start from an innocence." Hemingway wouldn't have known about us. No one does. Teenage E/B, AH, quasi-dystopian.
1. Two Paths Converge

**Summary:**_ He white-knuckles his pen, dragging a line of ink across the page. I can guess which passage he's marking:_ _"All things truly wicked start from an innocence." Hemingway wouldn't have known about us. No one does. _Teenage E/B, quasi-dystopian.

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**My Sweet Variable**

**Chapter 1: Two Paths Converge**

I close my eyes to the sun and lean heavily against the sagging chain-link fence. It's as bent out of shape as anything at this school. I can feel the heat of the diamond-shaped links through the thin cloth of my P.E. uniform; I imagine them searing impressions into my flesh. A tidy, evenly spaced grid. Tic-tac-toe on my skin.

I can picture Coach Clapp standing across the field next to the neglected tennis courts with her clipboard, looking sideways at the three of us and deciding to let our nonparticipation slide. I've seen it dozens of times—the way she purses her lips in resignation as she scratches check marks next to each of our names_. _We're present, soaking up vitamin D, and it's enough.

"Bella." I lift my head at the sound of my name. "Hey, Bella."

"Hmm."

Rose squints and makes a visor with her flattened hand. "Why are my sunglasses in my locker and not on my face right now?"

"Because it's April in Seattle. The sun has no business being out. What are you looking at?" I turn my head slowly toward the halfhearted scrimmage match taking place on the soccer field. Torsos in gray T-shirts rise out of a tangle of chalky shins and puffs of dust.

"New Guy." Rose fluff-shakes her hair so it falls in front of her face, pretending to search out split ends. Her peroxide habit means it's pretty much all split ends. She peers through the blond curtain. "He needs a name."

"Why not…_Officer_?" Alice narrows her kohl-rimmed eyes, looking up from her book with a smirk. A black lacquered fingernail floats down to hold her place on the page.

"He's not a narc." By now Rose and I are plainly staring. New Guy, as Rose calls him, is taller than the others. His long legs should make him a fast runner, but he moves like a heavy and invisible cloak is weighing him down. He has hard sinews in his legs and tired shadows under his eyes that make Alice think he's a twenty-something cop working undercover, not the seventeen-year-old student he claims to be.

Alice follows my glance. "I'm halfway serious. I mean, who transfers schools two months before the school year ends?"

"His dad had to move for a job. I heard he's already got his credits from his old school, and his parents just wanted him enrolled so he would make friends." Ah. Rose has done research. I study her face. She isn't smitten, but this mode of attention means she's considering it.

"You heard all that, and you still don't know his name?" Alice purses her lips. "I just don't know. He's hiding something."

"Why do you even care, twerp?" I nudge the side of Alice's Doc Martens boot with my sneaker. The toughness she projects is real, but she's also a sweetheart who couldn't get arrested if she tried. "He could use a little beauty rest. But he's not a narc."

I know this about him—this New Guy.

I know practically everything about him.

I know his name is Edward. His purported and actual age is seventeen. He consumes cutting-edge comic books and run-of-the-mill sci-fi novels in equal measure. He goes for salty over sweet, but both at once trump either one alone. He's gifted with a knack for languages, a photographic memory, and the vision of a hawk. He is not a narc. He is, however, an operative in an elite and controversial top-secret espionage unit, trained from a young age to kill with precision and stealth.

Just like me.

+x+x+x+x+x+

After P.E. I should have study hall, but I'm excused because of Math Team. We drill on problem sets in a windowless room. Rather, I drill the team on their problem sets. The regional tournament is in two weeks; we've qualified every year that I've been on board. Math Team is a sort of cover for me. It's also a real team, with real meets and real kids scraping together paths to college on stepping stones of achievement.

And it was my point of entry into this life, once upon a time. I was nine. I stood up on stage in front of four hundred spectators in the sudden death match and solved a problem four seconds faster than the second-place kid, who was thirteen. Let B=2i-3j+4k, E=i-j+2k. Find, using the cross product, a vector perpendicular to both B and E. An astronaut shook my hand when I won. Then a man with glittering, fox-like eyes tapped my shoulder backstage and pressed a business card into my hand. _Aro_ was all it said. And a phone number.

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No one expects teenagers to have the inclination, let alone the skill, to hunt and bring down sophisticated criminal masterminds. To begin with, we are petulant and unfocused by reputation.

"_Your awkwardness is a weapon_," Aro says. He's our handler. "_The selfishness, the fits of sulking. Perfect. You repel attention because you remind people of the most uncomfortable times of their lives. They are quite…compelled to disregard you_."

He doesn't know—or care—whether it's an act. As if we could call forth these hormones. These oil glands and sudden crying jags. He only knows that it works.

And for those of us who shed our gawky features ahead of schedule—like Edward—well, youth is still an asset. Teenagers are children, in the eyes of the world. Innocent by definition. To imagine we've been singled out and molded into killers by a government sworn to protect us is simply…beyond. Unethical, without a doubt. No one would think it, and no one does. It's one of the factors contributing to our perfect strike rate.

I was ten the first time. I knew what I was doing. In a technical sense, I knew. Even a brutal organized crime boss will stop to listen to a kid in a scout uniform selling chocolate bars for juvenile diabetes research. _Ironic_, he'd said to me, peeling a crisp dollar bill from his wad of walking-around money. _Better me than you eating this poison, eh?_ I always remember that. Little did he know.

There are six of us. Emily, Sam, Leah, Jacob, Edward, and me. We're known—to only a handful of people in the world—as Operation Volturi, Sundial Unit.

We shouldn't exist, but we do.

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Math Team coaching duties keep me after school. I set up shop in the empty cafeteria, spreading out the team's schedules and cross-referencing our out-of-town meets with quizzes we'll miss. Aro's civilian cover involves oversight of the Volta League, the national umbrella for the various academic team contests, including math. It helps him move his assets where he needs them, he says, meaning the six of us. Edward's subject is science.

I'm dropping planned absence notices into the teachers' mail slots when Dr. Berty pokes his head in.

"Bella. I said I'd take these old laptops to the recycling center, but…do you want them? Maybe fix them up so the folks at that retirement home can email their grandkids or something?"

Everybody always assumes math nerds are computer nerds, too. That's not really my thing, but Edward might make use of these. I was thinking of taking a cab home anyways, so I nod my head yes. "Thanks, Dr. Berty."

It's dark when I step out of the cab, save for a dozen white-bright floodlights rising above humming generators. Crews have the whole street torn up, and the cabbie hasn't been able to get closer than the end of my block. A King County Energy truck tells me it must be an emergency gas main repair.

As I lug my canvas bag of laptops up the steps of my home, I watch my shadow morph in the path of the work crew's lights. The scenario rings a bell, improbably. _If Bella is traveling away from a stationary light source at a rate of three feet per second, and her shadow is shrinking at a rate of five feet per second, how tall is the light source?_

The construction goes on all night, pale light flooding my ceiling from below as if the moon has come unhinged from the sky. The air tastes like tar. I toss and turn through the subterranean grinding and rumbling until I hear Charlie filling the kettle for his pre-dawn tea.

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A note drifts to the dusty floor below my locker when I rattle the metal door open. _Meet me at the skate benches after 7__th__ period. _Edward and I are both wired with subcutaneous SatCom transceivers, but the charade is important.

His handwriting is perfectly cartoonish, all exaggerated angles and thickly shaded pencil lines. The mark of a person who wants the world to think he'd rather be tagging freight trains. Maybe he would rather be, for all I know.

I look at Alice and Rose, who are looking at me. This might as well begin now. It's the whole point of his being here, after all. And better now than after Rose makes up her mind; I would hate for her to feel rejected.

"New Guy," I say, letting them inspect the note. I'm starting to get a sense of the persona he's aiming for: standoffish, arrogant, decisive.

Rose's gaze lingers on his initials. She finally learned his name this morning in English class. "What's it been, three days? He's bold."

"See? Narc." Alice cocks an eyebrow, but judging by her mischievous grin, she's already moved on to thinking of him as potential boyfriend material for me. "You holding? Get it out of your bra; that's the first place they check."

I snort, and then we're all giggling. Sometimes it overtakes me without warning, this teenage-ness. Sure, I was once elbow-deep in the eviscerated body of a terrorist who swallowed secrets, but the fact remains: nobody's ever felt me up.

As if on cue, Edward rounds the corner and cruises past, listening without looking. I know he hears our laughing fit—and our efforts to suppress it. His eyebrows peak up in the center of his face, and the apples of his cheeks flush crimson. It overtakes him, too.

I don't need my SatCom to hear Aro's voice in my head. _Perfect._

+x+x+x+x+x+

Edward rocks his ankles left and right, rolling from side to side on his board as he watches me walk across the litter-strewn ball field after school. Cool gray masks the sun and mutes my shadow.

"Phoenix."

"Big Bird."

He laughs at my use of his childhood nickname. He was always the tallest in our cohort. He tried to get "Hawk" to stick when we discovered his superhuman vision, but it never took. This other name did.

"So, how do we work this?" I sit down on the bench.

"Just like this, for a minute. We already have an audience." He looks down at his feet, smiling shyly. It's the kind of thing my friends spying from across the field will swoon over. Boys like Tyler Crowley and Mike Newton will get the message. I'll have an answer for people who want to know where I spend all my time. _New Guy_. The hard part will be pretending he hasn't already been my best friend for six years. I tuck my hair behind my ear for effect and really look at him, finally.

He takes my breath away, to be honest. As frequently as we talk on the SatCom, we see each other just six or eight times per year. Quarterly skills clinics, team retreats, the occasional extraction drill. He's been changing, little by little.

It's his eyebrows I notice this time: a man's eyebrows. Together with last summer's cheekbones, the jawline he got for Christmas, and that way of pinning you with his gaze he's had as long as I've known him…this is the sort of face people don't say no to.

A chilling fear strikes me, making my chest tighten. Someone like him—Aro won't want to let him go. Even after he hits his zero year, they'll find a way to keep him in. Tears spring into my eyes.

"Oh, Edward."

His jaw flexes. "Hey. Not here, okay? Just, like, flirt with me a little. Make it look right. We'll talk business later. My place at five?"

I nod, crossing one leg over the other and swaying slightly. This is meant to be alluring, according to what I read, but I just end up feeling like I have big feet and bony knees. "Like this?"

"Ah…sure," he grins.

He takes out his "clean" civilian phone and enters my number into it, even snapping my picture.

"Look at how cute you are."

I roll my eyes. This creates a trail for us. A story. He calls my civilian phone and hangs up, so now I have his number. The grey sky starts to dribble, cool and prickly. Classic Seattle.

"So, you'll come by tonight? Do you need to ping your resources?" He winces. "I mean your dad. Sorry."

Living with Charlie makes me the exception among Sundial kids. Edward and the others are orphans who are co-housed with career Volturi operatives for the sake of appearances. And for support purposes, too, I gather.

Edward's resources, as we call them, are Carlisle and Esme. They know only what they need to know—maybe less, if I'm being honest. Sundial is a secret even within the Volturi organization. _Not everyone can be expected to understand us_, Aro says. The story Carlisle and Esme believe is that Edward is a witness they're protecting. The official public story is that Edward is their foster son.

"No. Charlie's working two jobs right now. And…he's got to find out sooner or later about this new boyfriend of mine, right?"

"Think he'll approve?"

Honestly? "Not a chance." Something tells me it won't matter. "I'll be there at five."

The rain isn't exactly heavy, but it's started to drip into my eyes, and I have a three-block walk to the number ten bus. I gesture in that direction, heave my bag onto my shoulder, and start walking away backwards.

"Hey." He takes a step toward me, shrugging off his hoodie. "Here. You look cold."

Such good instincts, this one. I can practically hear Alice squealing from here.

+x+x+x+x+x+

I put in an hour of community service at Evergreen Manor before going to Edward's. My favorite task is bringing the large-type book cart around to all the residents.

Mrs. Cope takes a romance novel she's already read twice, so I mark it on the list to get a few more like that.

"You young people with your college apps," she says to me. "Such a lot of pressure."

I smile and tell her it's not like that, and that coming here relaxes me—which is true. With my record of performance in math, I don't need the service work to beef up my college applications. I just need it.

It's less than a mile to Edward's, so I walk. I stop at the 7-Eleven on the way and stuff a couple of cans of wet dog food into the pockets of Edward's hoodie, paying with crumpled singles. As of a week ago, Miss Violet won't touch the dry stuff, and the vet isn't quite sure why.

My phone chimes with a text from Alice.

_Alice: Are you with him?_

_Me: Gonna hang out a bit, yeah. Just left Evergreen._

_Alice: Heard he has his own basement apt, almost._

_Me: Maybe. Idk._

_Alice: Be safe. ;)_

I don't reply. Alice's imagination gets the best of her sometimes. And sometimes, I don't correct her.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Edward does have his own basement apartment, almost. When he introduces me to Carlisle and Esme as a girl from school "here to do homework," he jokes that we'll be down "in the bunker."

"Glad to see you're settling in," Carlisle says. He hands Edward a shiny Mylar package. "This came for you from the Volta League. And—leave the bedroom door open."

I appreciate his parental eyebrow-raise. It's shorthand for: _Homework? On a Friday night? _

"That's good work," I whisper to Edward, giggling, as we stagger down the stairs. He looks at me sideways, shaking his head.

"Lay off of Carlisle. He's keeping me normal, you know?"

I do know. I sit cross-legged on the bed. He drops our assignment pack on the comforter next to me and turns the radio on low; the gadget has noise-scrambling properties so we can't be overheard or recorded.

"What does he think is in here?" I ask, tapping the package. I assume Carlisle must not know what it is, or he'd never have handed it over so casually.

Edward flinches. "Well, he only knows about Volta's above-board operations. He thinks I do quality assurance on the middle school science questions," he says. "And coaching. On top of traveling to meets and stuff."

I nod, humming. "Your room is nice."

"Thanks."

Looking around, I can see that this space isn't proportioned right; it's a good two feet shorter than the length of the hallway would suggest. I find myself scanning the wall behind his bookshelves.

"Always measuring." Edward smirks. He can guess what I'm thinking.

"I can't believe more people don't notice." I'm constantly calculating figures in my head. Square footage, cubic volume. It keeps my mind calm—just having a grasp of the known elements. One thing math teaches you is to break a problem down into components. Know your constants. Isolate your variables. Don't mistake one for the other.

"People don't really look—not the way you do. They see what they expect to see." He runs a fingertip down a seam in the wallpaper, showing me where the wall opens.

"And that leads to…"

"It's just a way out. This gets me into the woods behind the house."

Edward pulls his chair up next to the bed so we can review the strike plan for this weekend.

His computer faces the bed. I want something to be on the screen in case Carlisle or Esme decide to check up on us, so I wiggle the mouse to wake it up. I'm instantly sorry. I shield my eyes and turn away.

"Ew, Edward. I don't need to see that."

"So don't go nosing around." He fiddles with the computer.

"So close your browser."

"Whatever. It's pretty tame stuff." His ears are pink, despite his calm tone. "Stop pretending you're shocked."

"I'm not. I'm just…never mind." I'm not sure what to call this feeling; I almost wish I'd seen something truly vulgar on his screen. Instead, this page full of college girls in white wet T-shirts trips a weird chord in me. It's too innocent, given the things I know he's seen. I need to cover my reaction. I leap to my feet and make a show of scanning Edward's bedspread. "Is this where you—Jesus. Switch places with me."

He rolls his eyes and complies.

I change the subject, peeling the SecurSeal off of our assignment pack. Breaking the seal makes a very distinctive sound. Surprise registers on Edward's face; even though we've known this was coming, it's strange to hear that sound in the presence of another person. In each other's presence. It's our first joint project.

He does this thing where he closes his eyes a fraction of a second longer than it should take to blink. With his eyesight and his memory, it's a way of taking a picture, he's told me. I hope he's thinking that working together might make this whole process easier. More bearable. Something.

"All right, Phoenix. Let's get started."

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**AN: Many thanks to beta and pre-readers happymelt, midsouthmama, and faireyfan. My "constants." This is going to be a fairly angsty story with elements of romance, drama, adventure, and a dash of sci-fi. I hope you enjoy it!**


	2. Linear Dependence

**Chapter 2: Linear Dependence**

The assignment brief is thorough and clear. We need to get to Gas Works Park tomorrow, where we'll execute the new bee sting changeup hit Aro invented. I memorize the positions and triangulations. The target is the lynchpin in a human trafficking operation; taking him out before he reaches the docks will bring higher-ups out of the woodwork, and the feds will sweep in. By then, we'll be long gone.

Edward goes through the protocol of testing his darts and my syringe in a BioSafe canister before resealing the items in fresh Mylar packs, one for each of us. He pinches and holds his right earlobe, activating his direct SatCom line to Aro. "Big reporting. Equipment tested and secured. Over."

I chime in on my own right earlobe, just so my voice stamp and code name are on record. My left earlobe is my line to Edward—just as his is to me. It all goes through the Volturi computers, of course.

Our target for tomorrow is male, Caucasian, fifty-six. He looks to be much older than that in the profile shots. The bags under his eyes tug the skin away from his bored-looking, bloodshot eyeballs. Aro thought to include other photographs in the brief: bodies crowded into a shipping container. Girls, mostly. Edward won't look directly at them. He looks at my expression instead, and I think he can see everything he needs to know there. Whatever he sees, it makes him crack his knuckles. I power up the shredder.

A moment later, Esme's head appears in the doorway. She nods toward the laundry room. "Dryer is all yours, kid." She looks at the growing pile of paper shreds filling the transparent receptacle.

Edward's eyes soften as he smiles at her. "Science assignment. Recycling. Too noisy?"

"Uh-uh. Carry on. Bella, you're welcome to stay for dinner, if you'd like."

"Oh, thanks, but I need to get home and feed the dog."

She nods and leaves us to it.

I tilt my head, looking at Edward. "You do your own laundry, huh?"

He shrugs. "I'm particular." Then, "Miss Violet?"

I sigh. "Still puking up half her meals. She's lost, like a pound."

"You'll get her turned around. I know you will." He looks up from his task of emptying the shredder into a large plastic Ziploc bag. These new eyebrows of his are star performers; the slightest crinkle delivers a heavy dose of sympathy. "I'll run you home."

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In the car, I shuffle my two cans of dog food back and forth in my hands. My brain races through volume and density calculations, doubling and dividing. I wonder if I can ask Edward to take me to the store for heavy groceries. Maybe Sunday. I mean, now that we're acting like a couple. I turn and watch the way the streetlights cast a glow on his face as we drive. Am I supposed to be believable as his girlfriend?

"So…big boobs, huh? That's what does it for you?"

"I'm seventeen, Bella. It doesn't take much." He's scowling, eyes focused on the road ahead. "Why do you care?"

That's a good question. "I'm just thinking about Monday at school. Whether we'll be convincing."

"Hmm. It's high school. Nobody asks questions about that kind of thing. What motivation would we have to fake it?"

He's right, of course. The harder thing would be getting people to believe the truth. I think we're done talking about it—until I hear him clear his throat. I realize the engine is quiet. We're parked in front of my darkened house. He's twisted in his seat to face me when I turn to look at him.

"I'm glad it's you I'm paired up with. I mean, Leah is fine, but I think she works better with Jake. And I never liked the idea of you with him."

It's not that he dislikes Jake; there's no room for distrust in our operation. But Jake has always been vocal about wanting to be career Volturi, and Edward can't relate to that. Jake has a tendency to fall in line with groups instead of relying on his own objective faculties, Edward thinks.

"I'm glad, too." I cover his hand with mine on the console between us. "Hey, thank you for being the one to move. I know it wasn't easy for you leaving Chicago."

He frowns. "I don't mind. You have your relationships here. The girls. Charlie. It's different for me."

He's been with Carlisle and Esme for three years, and it's his longest placement. He makes friends from time to time but pulls away when they start to ask questions about his moods. He likes that he never has to lie with me, he says.

I pull his hand in between mine, kneading the thick muscle at the base of his thumb. I don't remember how I know he carries stress here. I just do.

He smiles and squeezes back.

Every once in a while, it's possible to set aside my conditioning and see past the colleague to the friend underneath. This is one of those times. His eyes are pleading with me, whether he realizes it or not. He catches my eye before scanning the interior of the car, reminding me wordlessly that Aro has ears everywhere. _For your own protection, _Aro would say.

I turn the radio on for ambient noise and move into Edward's arms, holding him close. To a passerby we'll look like a frisky couple, I guess, but the point is to get my lips close to his ear. It's the only way we can be sure of having a private conversation.

"Talk to me." My voice is lower than a whisper.

I feel his rib cage expand and contract before his breath tickles my skin. "Do you ever find yourself wishing Charlie knew? Someone who would stick up for you and help you sort out right from wrong?"

I have to stifle a gasp. This kind of talk would get us both called to headquarters. Right and wrong isn't supposed to occur to us. This is the kink they haven't worked out in their genius program: We develop consciences. I can't even answer. I just shake my head no.

He shudders and sinks in my arms, letting me hold him. "I just don't know how much longer I can do this without losing…you know." I do know. _All semblance of humanity_ is the thing he means. He thinks about it a lot.

"You're eighteen soon, and then it's just one more year." Feeble, I know.

He sighs. It's hot on my neck. That sigh says _a year is forever_.

I can't have him breaking down on me. "Shh. You're a good person, Edward. The best I know. You've never made anyone suffer—not on purpose, not on accident. Listen to me. And none of them were innocent. They died for a reason."

"That's not true." He tenses slightly, and his words sound pinched.

I shake my head, knowing what he's thinking of. Two years ago, he was working with Sam when a hit went awry. The target had an allergic reaction to a toxin, making him seize six hours earlier than expected—when he was behind the wheel. It wouldn't have mattered, except the target took another car down a cliff with him.

"And anyways, I don't care," he says. "We're playing God; it shouldn't be up to me or you. Or—ah, fuck—that girl."

"I know." I just keep stroking his back. He can't even say her name. Those people who died had a kid who survived, and Aro had her brought into the program. Bree. She'll be one of us when Emily retires in a few months. "I know."

I hold him like this until I feel his agitated heart slow down. There's nothing I can say, because neither of us has a choice. None of us do. Aro has dossiers on us that would put us away for life. _We must all protect ourselves, mustn't we? _he says. _Don't give me a reason not to vouch for you, and we'll be fine._ We're supposed to be allowed to walk away when we turn nineteen—the zero year—but there's no escaping the feeling that somehow it's impossible to just shed this existence like a snakeskin. To just leave it behind.

Edward starts to straighten up, speaking normally now. "Um. By the way…it's not so much big boobs, just so you know. More like…sensitive."

I let go, barking laughter. "Dude. Just because you can tell me anything doesn't mean you need to."

"Too much?" Tears are shining in his eyes, but he has a smile plastered across his face.

"Just—see you tomorrow."

"Good night, Bella."

He waits until I'm safely inside my house before he turns the engine on and drives away.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Everything goes smoothly at Gas Works Park. Edward gets positioned up on a hill with his dart gun, which is camouflaged to look like a pair of binoculars. I'm flying a kite, blending in with the crowds and reading the angles of wind gusts so I can engineer a believable collision with my target. When I get the visual confirmation this is him, I give the signal and then let the wind take me into his path where we collide. Just as the man untangles himself from my kite string, he slaps a hand to his neck. A bee—or what looks like a bee to him—falls to the concrete path.

"Motherfucker! Oh, uh. Pardon my language."

I left my hair unwashed today, so it looks stringy, and I'm wearing ill-fitting overalls and chunky glasses. Edward's suggestion. I must pass for fifteen at the most.

"S'okay. He got you good." Edward's dart will have left behind real bee venom, a synthetic slow-acting poison, and a microscopic tracking device. The man's neck is already swelling up.

"I'm stung? You can see it?"

"Looks pretty bad. You're allergic?" A crowd has started to gather. Strangers begin shouting out advice.

"I'm all right," he says to no one in particular. "I have my EpiPen." He draws it out of his jacket pocket.

_My_ EpiPen is what he has, which means he has a second type of poison. Aro is nothing if not thorough. The serial number will trace back to a bad batch, which will give local authorities a story to tell any of these spectators who might get curious. I pretend to be distracted by a problem with my kite and walk away, winding the string as I go. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him stab the EpiPen into his fleshy thigh. He sinks to his knees. Edward's voice on the SatCom calls it. And we're done.

A little girl wearing a tulle ballerina skirt on top of fleece pants stands stock still on the path, clutching a stuffed rabbit to her chest. Her eyes are riveted to the scene I'm walking away from.

+x+x+x+x+x+

We watch the six o'clock news in Edward's den, alone. There's no mention of a deadly bee sting in Gas Works Park. But we do see coverage of the trafficking ring bust. Twelve high-ranking bosses from three crime families are in cuffs, and area hospitals are treating almost two hundred underage girls and a few dozen boys for dehydration.

"That needed to be done today," I say. It's not a question, but I look to Edward for his agreement.

He scrubs his face with his palms and looks at me. I can't read the expression on his face.

"I'll take you home," he says. "We both need to decompress."

+x+x+x+x+x+

On Saturdays, Charlie only has four hours between his day shift as a guard at the Museum and his night shift riding ambulances as an EMT. I've made a habit of being home during that time, so I feel terrible when I walk in to find him microwaving a Lean Cuisine.

"Dad. I was planning to make you steak. What are you eating?"

He looks back and forth between me and the cardboard packaging in the trash. "Orange chicken. Had it before. It's not bad. Look, it's…'heart healthy.'"

"Well, at least get off your feet for a while. Let me do this." I stir-fry some extra vegetables to add to his meal and make a salad we can both eat. I can tell he isn't sure how to interpret my fussiness. I don't often dote on him, so he gets nervous when I do.

"We can have steak tomorrow. Settle down. It'll keep one more day. What's going on, kid?"

I glance up from my plate and see him eyeing the mound of lettuce leaves that I've been pushing around. I can't exactly tell him what's on my mind, but it occurs to me to share a bit of news. "Oh. I, um…I met this new guy at school this week. Edward Cullen."

"And now you're not eating? What, did he say something to make you feel self-conscious? You're a perfectly healthy weight!"

"What? No. I just…we went to the movies today. I ate a lot of popcorn."

He scowls. I know he can't stand it that I'm growing up without a mother. He brings home pamphlets from the women's clinic at the hospital and studies them like they're ancient runes. Sometimes I come across him muttering at the framed photo of my mother I keep on my dresser; she died in a fire the summer before I turned six, so I have only faint memories of her.

When he sees me begin to eat more of my dinner, he huffs.

We eat in silence for a few moments. I glance up again when I sense him looking at me. He's giving me the side eye. "Is that what you wore for your date?"

Crap. I'm still in my overalls. "I—well, it wasn't planned like that. I thought we were just going to work on a messy science project. For extra credit. Now who's making me feel self-conscious?" I hate attacking his weak spot, especially when his weak spot is his belief in himself as a parent. He does a fine job. Tears prick my eyes.

"Okay, jeez. I was just going to say there's some cash in my top drawer if you need…things. A new outfit."

I roll my eyes in what I think is an expected manner. "I should be fine. But thanks."

"Pick up some mousetraps if you go to the store tomorrow, hey? Miss Violet won't leave the cellar alone. I think that street project the other night sent some critters scrambling for cover."

"Mousetraps? Just what kind of store do you think I'm shopping for clothes at? I'm burning these overalls."

"You know what I mean. While you're out and about." He's smiling again.

"Okay, Dad."

"And bring this Edward over to the house. I want to meet him."

+x+x+x+x+x+

That night I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding. I freeze but keep my eyes peeled wide, casting about the room for something, anything to distract myself from the images in my mind.

I startle when I hear Edward's voice in my left ear, gravelly and slurred, but with a sharp edge. "What happened? Are you all right?" I hear knocking and fumbling noises coming from his end.

Sure enough, my shaking fingers are wedged around my left earlobe. I must have pinched it in my half-conscious alarm. I answer him, sobs bubbling up. "Oh. Sorry. I didn't mean to...I'm okay. Ten twenty-two, disregard." I'm alert enough to remember my ten-codes, at least.

"You don't sound okay."

"Just a dream."

"I'm coming."

Fifteen minutes later, he creeps up the fire escape and in through my window. Without a word, he climbs into bed and wraps himself around me like a human straight jacket. His clothes feel cool from the night air. Edward strokes my forehead, moving the hair out of my wet face.

"What is it? Can you talk about it?"

"Mmm—Miss Violet."

"Shit. What happened? Is she worse?"

"My dream. I dreamed she died. And I just stood…I stood there watching her. I didn't feel a thing. I didn't even try to comfort her while...you know, while…"

"Shhh. That wouldn't happen. You love her. I know you do." He tightens his hold on me. The protocol for this type of thing says he should file an immediate report and have me debrief with a psych resource, but Aro isn't that strict about it. What Aro wants to learn, he finds out; what he doesn't care to know, he ignores.

The strange thing is that this reaction comes as a relief to me. I think it's a relief to Edward, too.

"Can you…I mean, do you need to get the car home so no one notices—"

"I rode my bike here. Just rest."

I fall back asleep with a vague awareness of his palm stroking up and down my back.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Sunday is better. I introduce Edward to Charlie after having made Charlie his special steak for lunch. Edward gets raked over the coals all the same. We spend some time hanging out with Miss Violet. She's a terrier mix with rusty, frizzy hair. Edward tries to toss a stick with her in the street but stops when we both notice the way she limps. She's content to just sit in his lap with her tongue hanging out. He seems content, too.

We do our homework at the kitchen table, much to Charlie's bemusement. I check over Edward's calculus problem sets and go over derivatives with him. He doesn't need the grade, but he wants to pass his AP test. Word problems are his Achilles heel. He keeps trying to visualize real-world scenarios that correspond with things like velocities (bullets) and trajectories (shrapnel) and how many thousands of people live within a one-mile radius of a certain point (a dirty bomb). He can't just work within the abstraction.

"If you have to think about something," I say, "think about baseball."

This makes him grin stupidly. "You give the same advice as _Maxim_."

"Dork. I think we're done here." I flip the textbook closed and leave him to gather the papers scattered by the puff of air.

He runs me to the grocery store and back. I have plans to go to some band's in-store appearance with Rose and Alice in Ballard later. My bonus money comes in dribs and drabs in order for me to stay inconspicuous, but I have enough to spring for Vietnamese food for the girls and myself after the show. Edward's situation is a bit different, because people perceive him to be from an affluent family, but most of his money is held in a trust like mine is.

He insists on buying—and paying for—the fancy, expensive dog food. He even thanks me for indulging him, as if he's the one benefitting.

He sits on the stoop and waits with me for the girls to come pick me up. Even after our nice day, he's beginning to brood. He knows as well as I do that this downtime after a big job doesn't last forever. And we still have yet to learn what our long job is—the reason he's been transferred here. He slots his hands into the gaping gashes in his jeans where his knees poke out.

"You're funny. Want me to patch those for you?"

"Hell no." He turns to squint at me, grinning. "I mean, where would I put my hands?"

I mimic his position, capping my knees with my palms, even though I don't have rips in my jeans. I feel like a miniature person next to him.

He laughs at me. "Now, see, you only wish you were a slob like me." He pulls my legs onto his lap, rotating me so I sit with my back to the hand railing.

"So…Girlfriend," he says. "Tomorrow at school."

"Yeah?"

"Did you want to do this pretty much by the book? PDA and everything?" I wish I could say he was joking. There's actually a manual on masquerading as a couple. Edward has had to carry out a sweetheart con before, back in Chicago; I asked him to spare me the details. He says our two-sided mock romance should be a million times easier.

"Oh. I guess." I glance down to where his hands are resting on my knees. "Is this the sort of thing you had in mind?"

His eyebrows shoot up. "Well." He meets my eye and presses his lips together for a moment. "There's familiar…"

I watch his Adam's apple retreat and reappear, just to have something to focus on. His hands are travelling higher up my thighs. Oh.

"And then there's familiar."

"Uh-huh." My voice squeaks, and his warm hands tighten into a grip that feels more playful than intimate. When I look at him again, he's blinking slowly.

"Okay, you. We'll stick with zones four and three. Better if I don't repel you."

I laugh weakly. "You don't repel me. You're just forgetting people know me at this school. I'm not really a touchy-feely sort of girl."

"Well, that's because you hadn't met me yet. As far as they know. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to keep your hands off the public-consumption version of me. I've been practicing being irresistible."

I shake my head. It's fascinating to watch him dial the charm up and down on demand. "I'm sure you have."

I'm about to say I think he might have a future in Hollywood when a pair of headlights blinds me. We both turn to see Rose and Alice pull up in Alice's battered black Beetle. He stands, helping me to my feet and giving my elbow one last squeeze before loping across the lawn to his car. He's wearing his dazzling all-audiences grin now. The girls watch him go.

This is good, I tell myself. I won't get a break from reciting the official story for the next few hours. The last thing I need is to be alone, pondering all the ways that conversation could have gone differently.

+x+x+x+x+x+

**AN: Wow, you guys - I am blown away by the responses to chapter 1! Seriously amazed. Who knew there were so many fans of teen assassin intrigue out there? Thank you all SO much for reading! Thanks**** thanks thanks to beta and pre-readers happymelt, midsouthmama, and faireyfan for devoting precious weekend time to setting me straight. **


	3. The Oblique Angle

**Chapter 3: The Oblique Angle**

As Alice pulls back into the street and drives us toward Broadway and the city beyond, I do my best to steer the conversation away from Edward. I ask Alice about the band we're going to see, knowing her response will last all the way up through Queen Anne and across the Fifteenth Avenue bridge. But I can tell she and Rose are humoring me. They know I get self-conscious. Or they believe that I do. I'm not even sure what's real myself, to be honest.

Alice keeps glancing at me in the rearview mirror. At one point Rose twists toward me and bites her lip, toying with how to phrase whatever she's about to say, but Alice reaches across from the driver's seat to cover her mouth. I shrug and look out the window until Alice finds street parking in Ballard and yanks up the emergency brake.

I brace myself for an onslaught of questions, but it never comes. They both just stare at me, waiting.

"So," I say.

Alice must see something in my face, because she twists her lips to the side and seems to be biting her tongue. Rose chuckles under her breath and shakes her head.

A strange wave of bitterness suddenly swells in my heart. I feel muted rage at the idea that I can't just go giddy over a simple thing like a cute boy the way they expect me to right now. I'm supposed to be better at this—lying to my friends. I huff and make an awkward face.

Rose finally breaks the silence. "So. New Guy."

"He's new," I say. This feels true, in a way. My mind is reeling with flashbacks of the weekend I've had with him. "Still very new."

"You don't have to tell us a thing, you know," Rose says. "It's okay to keep it private."

"But you get along, right? You've hung out three days in a row," Alice says. She smiles as if she's trying to give me permission to get excited. "This could be something. I mean, if you like him."

"Yeah." I nod my head vigorously. "Oh, totally. He makes me nervous, but in a good way. He's sort of…I don't know. Thoughtful." This, of all things, makes me blush. Because it's true.

My phone buzzes with a text. _Thanks for the warm welcome._ This is for show, or he would have said it over the SatCom. I let Rose and Alice see me texting him back, a grin spreading across my face. _The pleasure is all mine_. And then we go inside the record store.

I like the band. They're young, with the sort of energy and bluster that so often stands in for real confidence in people our age. I buy the CD and sit on the curb outside while Alice smokes a cigarette with the skinny bass player. She turns red and shakes her head when he asks if she's coming to see them at the Crocodile this weekend. She doesn't even have a fake ID. She's told me she doesn't trust any of the sketchy characters who pretend to have a hook-up. I think she's probably right.

Rose looks sideways at Alice and this guy, and then makes wide eyes at me and stifles a laugh. I start to relax. This is going to be a fun night. Things aren't changing all that much just because I have a pretend boyfriend, I tell myself.

+x+x+x+x+x+

We're supposed to start a swimming module in P.E., but the pool filtration system isn't working. Coach Clapp has us crowd into the library where we're told to find books that have something to do with swimming. There's already a class of sophomores in here for Intro to Research Methods. I can feel their eyes watching Edward and me as we drift toward the back of the room.

He runs his fingers along the spines of various books, not really looking. He sneaks glances at Coach and leans in to whisper in my ear when we're not being watched.

"How are you?"

I don't know how he manages to make that look flirtatious, but he does. It's the way he moves my hair behind my ear, I decide.

"I'm good. You?"

He nods, grinning. His gaze lingers on my mouth for a moment, which I think is for the benefit of the two sophomore boys blatantly staring and eavesdropping from the table nearest to us. "Thanks for the music last night."

I'd opened up his audio channel a couple of times during the car ride home, surreptitiously giving him a sample of the sounds blaring from Alice's car stereo.

"I think you'd like this band. They're playing at the Crocodile on Friday. And I was thinking we…_you_…could get Alice and Rose IDs, and we could all go."

He nods, silently agreeing that this is exactly the sort of thing New Guy would do. But just as quickly, his face clouds over.

"My usual source might be...overkill in this instance." He shoots me an intense look that translates to: let's not deal Aro one more ace to work with—especially one that involves the girls.

I nod. "I have an idea. Come over after school; I'll show you."

Coach chooses this moment to interrupt us. "Hey, lovebirds. Finding much about swimming in the sociology section?"

+x+x+x+x+x+

Half of my Math Team hour is spent coordinating ride-shares down to Tacoma for Sunday's regionals. I'll already be there for a Sundial skills clinic, so I make up something about a Saturday night camping trip with Edward and suggest Angela pick up Eric and Ben. She's the best driver out of the three of them. They draw maps for one another with comical precision and argue over who'll ride shotgun.

When we finally turn to our mock quiz, Ben makes conversation while he races through the problems. "You guys are pretty serious already, huh?" He asks. "You and that Edward dude."

I'm glad to be able to draw a clear line for once. "Yep."

Angela oh-so-casually tilts her head, her eyes flitting to Ben's face. I gather she's trying to interpret his interest in my situation. Or Edward's situation.

"I'd like to go camping. I think I will go camping. Soon as I'm over this cold." He sniffs for effect. I have to stifle a laugh. "If one other person wants to come along, she can. But it has to be a girl. My tent says two-person, but it's close quarters, if you know what I mean."

I wait to see how Angela reacts to his clumsy hint, but she's looking at his work. She jabs a finger at the page. "Ben. Pay attention. Both y and n are less than six. You can just double the integers instead of going by trial and error."

She's right, too. He slaps a palm to his forehead. "D'oh."

"Ang, why don't you pick up Ben first? You can use the extra time to review formulas."

She flashes me a quick grin.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Back at my place, I chatter with Edward about our thwarted swimming module while I wordlessly direct his attention to the two half-dead laptops Dr. Berty gave me. He inspects them, then nods. For the first time since he's been in Seattle, I see what looks like real enthusiasm in his smile. He tucks both machines into his backpack.

Neither of us has ever logged onto these computers. Assuming we stay off of the secured Volturi network, they won't be traced to us. I know without him telling me that the next time I see mine, it will be configured to ride the neighbor's wireless, and I'll have some generic fake login name—and a way to talk freely with Edward. As an added bonus, he can also use these off-the-grid machines to make fake IDs for Rose and Alice before Friday's show.

He turns the conversation to work. "Hey, why aren't we riding to clinic together Saturday? Aro says I'm supposed to meet you there."

"Um, I'm taking Bree for her SatCom procedure beforehand. It was either me or Aro, so…"

"Yeah. She'll be more relaxed with you." Edward looks at his hands. "Will she be at the clinic, too, then?"

"She'll be there." This Saturday's clinic is a sniper drill, much as Aro finds it distasteful. He hates conventional weapons. He says a gun is a thug's tool. Nevertheless, he makes sure we don't get rusty. _One never knows_, he says. Apparently he doesn't think it's too early for Bree to start training.

For the time being, there's French homework—a three-paragraph description of something we like to eat. We sit on my bed to do it. My back is against the wall, and his is against the headboard. Our legs form a ninety-degree angle and our feet touch.

Miss Violet plods into the room, and Edward leans down to lift her up. She's tolerating the new food better, and I think she's stopped losing weight. She settles into the nook made by our feet and dozes off.

My head swims with conjugations and grammar rules. Edward, however, finishes quickly. His completed essay sits beside him, his uniform looping script peppered with perfectly placed accents.

"Do you remember our first weapons orientation?"

I look up from my French-English dictionary. "Of course."

"You were all skinned knees. So scrawny." He knocks my feet with his.

I frown. "And you weren't? We were eleven."

He rests his warm hand on my shin. "You didn't let me finish. I was going to say no one would have guessed you were such a natural with a pistol."

"Mhmm. I don't see it as being a natural so much as paying careful attention. It's not like I can see targets the way you do."

"No. But you control your piece. You stay calm."

"I guess Charlie always taught me to have a healthy respect for guns. For how dangerous they are." He is fastidious about his service revolver. The first thing he does when he comes home from the museum every day is unload, lock, and store his gun.

I start to page through my work again, but Edward's comments have started the wheels turning now. I glance up at his face to find him watching me.

"That's not really what you remember about that weekend, is it?"

He smiles sadly and shakes his head. He's never told anyone that during our search-and-rescue simulation he came across me half-submerged in a pond behind a deadfall of trees. I was hiding. From the rescuers. From all of it.

At the time, I'd tried to explain to him about the explosions triggering flashbacks to the fire that killed my mom, but he didn't want to hear any of it. He just waded in—fully clothed—and distracted me with stories about make-believe colonies of elves living in the mossy shadows of the branches. _Elves are afraid of humans,_ he'd said. _So they just pretend we're not real. It's easy._

I let myself rely on him so completely that day. If I hadn't been so exhausted and overwhelmed, if my defenses hadn't been down, I would have railed against it. But as it happened, it felt like comfort. It still does. It was like a part of me attached to him the way the arrow on my little gunmetal compass tied itself to the poles of the earth—invisibly, irrevocably.

When we finally made our way back to camp, caked in mud, Aro praised us for helping him illustrate an important lesson. _Sometimes rescuers are not to be trusted_, he'd said. _Let your gut tell you whether to be found._

Edward scoots over to sit beside me. He drapes his left arm over my shoulders and takes my French composition in his other hand, changing the subject and not changing it at the same time.

Double-speak and dissembling come second nature to us both by now, it occurs to me. I can't seem to talk about anything straight-on. I wonder whether this tendency has always been here, or came about because of Sundial. He pulls me toward him tightly while he marks corrections lightly in pencil.

"_On dit 'une limonade.' _Feminine." He murmurs into my hair.

"Stupid gendered nouns. There's no logic to it."

"I know. It's language, not math."

+x+x+x+x+x+

The next day after school Edward drives me to Evergreen Manor and says he'll read in the car while I do my volunteer shift. He wiggles his eyebrows at me when I pull the large print romance novels out of my book bag.

"What? Shut up. These are for Mrs. Cope." I'm giggling.

"I didn't say a word." He furrows his brow in mock concern. "But did you at least skim them? Are you sure these will get the job done?"

"Mrs. Cope is in her seventies. I'm not sure I'm the best litmus test for her likes and dislikes." I laugh at the obvious amusement on his face. "Think what you want. I'm gonna be late."

Whatever Edward's doubts may have been, Mrs. Cope oohs at the new selections. "Oh, goodness," she says. "Thank you. A person can only re-read the same old storyline so many times."

She looks the covers up and down a few times before shoving both books under her pillow. She glances at me, slightly abashed. "If old Mary Ellen Newton gets a look at these, she'll be on me like glue until I'm done. And then poor Mr. Stanley…" She gazes into the hallway as she trails off. I'm sure I don't want to know how she would finish that sentence.

"But you've got the real deal waiting for you, how about that? Young love and such." She gestures toward the window overlooking the parking lot as she eases herself down into her reading chair. "He's certainly a handsome young man. Does he treat you properly?"

"Oh. He does, yeah. He doesn't mind waiting. He likes to read."

She continues peering out the window. "I think I know him. Yes. My sister sold his family their house."

"Oh." I don't know what to say. I've heard the staff here say she doesn't have any family left—certainly no sister who is an active real estate agent. This isn't the first time I've worried that her mind is slipping.

"Does he care for Hemingway, your young man? Here, take him this." She strains to point to a well-used book in her personal stash lining the shelf next to the electric tea kettle. I pluck it out.

"What's it about?" The cover depicts an old-fashioned bridge.

She laughs softly. "Oh, heck if I know how to explain it. Paris and being young and all that. But worth a read. Boys seem to like it."

I thank her and shove it into my bag before moving on to organize the recreation lounge down the hall. When I stop in to say goodbye, she's asleep.

+x+x+x+x+x+

We stop at Kinko's on the way to my place. Edward slips some bills to the pale kid behind the counter. When we're finally in the relative privacy of my room, Edward holds the fake IDs under my ultraviolet light. They are flawless. I call Alice and hold the phone away from my ear when she shrieks in joy. She rushes me off the phone so she can call Rose about Friday night—but not before berating me for forgetting to mention this camping trip she heard Angela tell Jessica I'm taking with Edward. He smirks and cocks an eyebrow at me, overhearing.

Aro pages Edward and me on our SatComs and then patches in the others, two by two. Kingfisher and Crow—that's Sam and Emily. Jacob and Leah are Finch and Raven. When we're all assembled, he reviews the clinic agenda. He reminds us that Bree—Hum, he says, for Hummingbird—will be observing the clinic, even though she's still a month away from starting boot camp.

"King, since you'll serve as her mentor, I gave you an hour with her for trust-building time while Crow orients to her zero year transition," Aro says. He clears his throat. "I'm sure there will be ample opportunity for celebration in honor of dear Crow's transition, but take care not to overwhelm our impressionable newcomer, shall we? I don't need to remind any of you that this delicate little Hummingbird of ours is a full three years younger than the youngest of you. She needs to witness your confidence and your teamwork. Make me proud."

And we sign off.

We spend almost two hours powering through tedious French translations we won't have time to do this weekend. I know I'm overtired when I ask him to recite a certain passage three times. It's just so soothing, hearing how sensible and fluid he makes this troublesome language sound.

Before Edward leaves, I get him to come to the basement with me and investigate the telltale snapping noises that have been driving Miss Violet wild all evening. Sure enough, four tiny dead mice are waiting for me.

"Gross."

Edward scoops them up, traps and all, using plastic bags as gloves. He buries them under some heavy piles of newspapers in the trash can where Miss Violet won't get at them. We both wash our hands, even though I never touched a thing, and I walk him to the door.

"Well…I guess I'll see you at school. Thanks again for the help with French."

"You're forgetting carcass removal."

"That, too."

I watch him start to leave, only to see him spin on his heel and shut the front door again.

"Wait. There's something…something else. Speaking of French." He cringes as if in apology. "That was stupid. I mean, I don't want to do this for the first time in front of everyone in the cafeteria or something."

"Hmm?" I ask out of reflex, but I can guess what he means. And I agree. "Oh. Yeah."

He shuffles from one foot to the other, squaring his shoulders to face me. He brings a hand up to my face and gently strokes my cheekbone with his thumb. This is how it looks in movies, I think to myself.

"You can kiss me, too, you know," he says.

"Of course I can. Especially if you keep volunteering for rodent duty. That's so very boyfriend-ish of you."

"Can you not mention rodents right now?"

"Can you hurry up and shove your tongue down my throat?"

The look on his face melts into something softer, but just for a moment. "You're nervous." In a blink, he's grinning again. "Should I role play? Would that make it easier? What's something what's-his-name says? Ryan Gosling?"

"You're already role playing, remember? You're 'New Guy' now."

"I am?"

"Your nickname at school. That's what they call you."

He squints his eyes in mock dismay. "It's a little bland, isn't it?"

"Alice thinks you're a narc."

"Oh, that's good. Man of mystery. Mature. And only the really corrupt narcs make out with the students."

Somehow, he's distracted me so much that I've forgotten his fingers are in my hair. Almost.

"Ready?"

"Whatever. I'm sure it will be fine." Actually, I'm thinking it will feel like CPR, but I keep that to myself. "Just don't make it weirder, if you can help it."

He opens and closes his mouth. "I wish…never mind. I'm not helping."

"What?" I huff into my palm to check my breath.

"No, you're fine. God, Bella." He does this funny thing with his hands, moving back and forth between friendly shoulder-pats and softer experimental touches. "I just…you're a girl, okay. I know girls like to have _moments_. With some guy whose picture they have in their locker. I wish this was like that for you."

I shake my head. He's making it weird, all right. Him saying that makes me feel flushed. "Nobody really lives that sort of life anyhow. But for the sake of your inner-fantasy reel, if I were the type to get crushes, I'd have one on you."

He cracks a smile—his complicated smile. The one that always makes me feel a strange lump in my throat.

"Requests? Last chance. Tongue or no tongue?"

"You've kissed girls before. Just do whatever."

"Okay. Here we go. Don't hit me." He places his palms on either side of my face.

I close my eyes. I'm prepared for his mouth to crush me, but he only brushes his lips against mine at first. It's soft. He stays just like that for a moment, neither pressing on nor moving away. He smells different, being this close. It's his hair or skin or something. And then I feel his lips again, still soft, still slow.

I can't help thinking the craziest things—like: _We're breathing the same air. Has this air been in his lungs, or only his mouth?_ _Can he feel my heartbeat in my lips, or is that just me? _The tip of his tongue, light and wet, catches me off guard. When I gasp, I feel him sigh roughly, and then I feel the strength of his lips—but only for an instant.

"Um. Okay—sorry. This okay?" I feel his breath on my skin when he speaks.

I realize I'm gripping his wrists in my hands, and I can't tell if I meant to hold him to me or keep him at bay. I nod against his forehead and peck him quickly on the lips and then his cheek.

"Yeah. Good. That should be believable, right?" My voice wavers.

He leans away from me, looking off to the side for a moment and then looking me in the eye. "If 'believable' is what we're going for, yeah."

I wrack my brain for something to say. Anything to get that strange look off of Edward's face. "Oh! Speaking of French…Mrs. Cope asked me to give you something."

That did it. He laughs. "Did she, now?"

"Here." I pull the book she gave me off of the table next to the door. "It has something to do with Paris, she said. Hemingway. She saw you from her window and picked it out for you."

"Uh, okay. I guess I'm flattered." He flips back and forth through the pages, scanning. "All I know about Hemingway is he had a big old beard. Super rugged. Yes, definitely flattered." He shoves the book into his bag and swings the front door open. "If you don't mind, I'll leave you with that impression of me."

Before I can shut it behind him, he pokes his head back in.

"Don't forget to tell her how tough I looked manhandling those mousetraps."

"Shut up." I start to physically push him out, laughing, using the door as a lever.

As I lock up, I can hear him continue to mock-plead with me through the door.

"Promise you'll tell her?" And "I'm a good kisser—tell her that, too." And "Call me!"

Miss Violet looks back and forth between me and the door.

"I know," I say. "I know."

The sound of Edward's engine fades as he drives away. Miss Violet starts sniffing at a slip of plastic on the edge of the area rug—something that must have fallen from between the pages of Mrs. Cope's book. I bend down to pick it up before she can decide to start chewing on it.

"What's this, Miss V.?" Even as the words spill out of my mouth, I silently answer my own question. It's flexible, with random-looking markings around the border and a stiff translucent circle in the center. I've seen something like this before—once.

I slide the thing between the pages of my French textbook and zip everything into my backpack, not even remotely imagining any of the ways this flimsy polymer is about to change my life.

+x+x+x+x+x+

**AN: **Thank you all so much for reading! I'm floored by all the responses. So sweet. The beta and prereaders for this story are happymelt, faireyfan, and midsouthmama. -so much great guidance and tender loving grammar help! Thanks again - until next time.


	4. Set Notation

**Chapter 4: Set Notation**

I check and double-check the piles laid out across my bed on Friday morning. My schedule for the next few days is like a game of Tetris, and everything needs to be organized in just the right sequence. I've looked up the weather forecast for Tacoma and stalked snapshots on flickr to glean the dress code at the Crocodile. I'll go from school to Alice's, and then to our night out, which might go late—so there won't be time for packing before the Volta League bus picks me up Saturday morning. I've arranged to drop Miss Violet at the vet for an overnight observation on my way out of town to pick up Bree. It's a lot to prepare for.

Edward pestering me every five minutes over the SatCom isn't helping matters.

"What did you want to talk about?"

Great. I shouldn't have texted him last night about something I'm not ready to mention over a monitored channel. Now I need to lead him—and anyone who might be listening in at Sundial—to think it's about his kissing skills or something.

"Um. What do you think?"

"Ahhm. Well. I think it's related to the way we said goodbye."

"Sort of."

He hums. The SatCom isn't like a phone speaker, so it comes across as a sort of ticklish vibration, but after about a year with him on my channel I find it comforting.

"Right. We need to talk. Can I pick you up early? How soon can you be ready?"

"Give me ten minutes."

I turn back to packing and pick up my pace. My stuff for tonight goes in my school bag. Cargo pants and Gore-Tex layers for Saturday and a plain skirt and cardigan for Sunday's math meet go into a duffle. So many uniforms. I throw in pajamas, various pairs of shoes, and a hodgepodge of toiletries. I'm zipping it up when I hear Charlie's footsteps creaking the floorboards behind me.

"Sure you don't want me to come down and cheer you on?"

I turn around and smile at him. "Nah. Save your days off for the statewide meet."

He snorts at my bravado, but I can see an amused gleam in his eye. "You sure sound confident. Confident enough to use your last prep day for a camping trip."

I roll my eyes for effect. "For the millionth time, it's a Volta League Mentor Retreat. But, yes, I think we'll do fine."

"Well, you've worked hard for this. All you kids have. I'm just saying you owe it to yourselves—"

"Dad." I think it's sweet he's so concerned about my Math Team's chances. Of course, that's all he knows to be concerned about. "Anything can happen, I know. But it isn't a tough field this year. And we never cram right before a big meet. It's bad for recall."

"Mm-hmm. And Edward's got you covered in terms of camping equipment?"

I nod. "In all the years you've known me, do I tend to underprepare for things?"

He just chuckles.

"Anyways, the League provides everything."

"Okay, kiddo. I won't be here in the morning to see you off, so…you know. Keep your phone charged. Be safe."

He pats my shoulder and walks off to finish getting ready for work.

+x+x+x+x+x+

As I sit on the steps waiting for Edward, it's harder to fend off flashbacks to the dream that jolted me awake two hours ago. I was wearing Edward's hoodie and standing on one of the skate benches near school, resting my hands on his shoulders. It was raining, like on the day of our pretend first meeting, only this time instead of covering me up, he stripped the hoodie off of me. My shirt underneath was soaked through and transparent, and I wasn't wearing a bra. Edward stared. He didn't even pretend not to stare. And I liked it—for a minute, I liked it a lot.

_You_, he kept saying. _You_. And then _Vous_ and _Tu_. His jaw hung open, and his hands splayed across my ribcage, straining upward. His eyebrows furrowed.

When he turned his face up toward me, the pupils of his eyes were replaced by translucent plastic circles. That was what woke me up. I shudder just remembering it.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Edward pulls up to the curb, and I hop in. I ask him to take off the sunglasses he's wearing, and I relax only when I see his eyes. He's grinning from ear to ear, which makes me smile, which makes him lean over and kiss my temple.

"Was that what you had to tell me?"

I shake my head _no_ and then nod _yes_, thinking: _it wasn't, but now it is_. "I mean, um. But. There's something else. Important."

His face falls, and I know I've confused him. My fingers itch to pull my textbook out of my bag and show Edward what I found, but I can't do it in the car. I hope he knows I wouldn't brush him off for no reason. For the duration of the ten-minute drive to school, I settle for just resting a hand on him. Somewhere. I choose his shoulder.

Edward parks on the residential street behind the school, and I bolt out of the car and halfway up the block, seeking the anonymity of the outdoors. He follows close behind. He looks quizzically at my French textbook as I yank it out of my bag and then blanches when he sees what I'm using as a bookmark.

"Oh, shit. That's…" His eyes go wide. He actually laughs in surprise and stops in his tracks.

"Yeah." I close the book again.

He groans. "Walk with me." He pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket so that it looks like we're up to no good in an entirely expected way.

"It fell out of that nursing home book."

"On accident, or on purpose? That's the first question, I guess."

I nod my head and grab his hand to slow his pace. He grimaces at the cigarette in his other hand before throwing it down. He takes a long, even breath.

"I've seen toy lens decoders a few times, but that's intelligence quality. Vietnam War era?" he asks.

"I think so. The language—"

"Cambodian."

I look back toward his car and the school in the distance.

"Are we cutting first period?" I ask.

"What do you have—English?" I answer him with a nod, and we both turn to start climbing up the hill toward Beats Café on Fifteenth.

It takes us twenty minutes to decide we'll wait until after the weekend to acknowledge finding the thing. Most likely, this is some scheme of Aro's, but Edward is inclined to do some more recon before taking the bait. He wants to look at the Hemingway book again, for one thing, but he's left the book at home. I tell him I agree, and I mean it.

I recount what little I know and have observed about Mrs. Cope. It isn't much, and none of it is remarkable.

There are only so many scenarios that could be at play, and I matrix them out on a napkin: Mrs. Cope is a resource of Aro's, engaged either to test us or slip information to us; she's working alone or with a rogue agency; or she's oblivious, and the book itself is our focus. If her judgment is impaired by dementia, only the last option is viable.

I ask Edward if he knows who sold Esme and Carlisle their house. "Of course. They used a local real estate agent—everything out in the open. Rufus Crowley."

"Tyler's dad?" I shake my head. "Mrs. Cope claimed it was her sister. But I think her sister died years ago."

"If you ask me…a box of books from some Vietnam vet's basement got dropped off at the thrift store. It's a coincidence."

I dunk the scribbled-on napkin into my cold coffee dregs. I feel my shoulders loosen as I let down my guard for the first time today. Edward holds eye contact with me for an extra beat, and I know that above anything else, he's my rock. Nothing will ever interfere with that. I won't let it.

When we head back into school, a monitor patrolling the halls gives us both truancy slips. I stow my French textbook in my locker, the lens decoder tucked safely within.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Alice's enthusiasm for The Southern Wars takes my mind off all things espionage-related. We're at her house getting ready for the show. She hasn't stopped playing their album all week.

"They used to be called Army of Maria before the lead singer and the bassist broke up. She took the name with her when she spun off to start her own band, but The Southern Wars were the ones who got a recording contract."

Alice's arms wave around above her head as she struggles into a tight turtleneck dress. I help her by tugging the fabric down.

"Thanks." Her face is pink and flushed when she emerges. "Anyhow, they're going on a mini-tour of the West Coast starting tonight, so I need to get Jasper's number so we can at least text while he's away. You'll help me, right? Jasper's the bass player. The blond."

She holds up a pair of earrings, which Rose vetoes. "Too much." She goes back to proofreading Alice's write-up for next month's _Seattle Beat_.

I nod in agreement. Not dressing up is a more convincing way to pass for twenty-one, ironically. A faded band shirt and tight jeans with high-end shoes is my fail-safe combination. Alice is still looking at me expectantly.

"Um. Blond bass player. Yeah, he's cute. What do you want me to do?"

"Fake car trouble so I can play damsel in distress."

Rose nixes this idea immediately.

"Okay. How about asking me to autograph the _Beat_ in front of him?"

This makes me giggle. Alice is proud of the writing she does for the local music monthly, but not to the point where she crows about it. "Al, he's seen us together. Would I ask my friend for an autograph?"

"That's what makes it work. Be super blatant about it, and if it makes him laugh, I'm in. If not, he has no sense of humor and he's not worth my time."

I love my friends, so I tell them so.

+x+x+x+x+x+

When Edward rings the doorbell a while later, he scans my outfit with wide eyes. His eyebrows take a ride up his forehead and down again.

"This is suitable for the Crocodile, right?" When I yanked these jeans on earlier, I silently thanked whoever invented mixed martial arts for making strong thighs a reality.

"Sure. I like this." His gaze lingers at my feet. He hasn't seen these high-heeled ankle boots before. "Can you walk in those?"

"I can run in these. Kick, fight, dance. Do long division."

"Liar. Since when can you dance?"

"Since…since a long time ago! Since before you met me." I have to bite my tongue to keep from calling him out on his blunder. The girls appear to be marveling at our chemistry, thankfully.

"Right. So, at least a week." He throws an arm over my shoulder. "Taxi's waiting. Should we go?"

Edward devotes about ten percent of his attention to scanning the room all night. He keeps me close, circling his arms around my waist from behind in a gesture that is mostly display, the rest true unease stemming from our strange discovery.

The band is good. For a while, wrapped in Edward's protective embrace, I play at pretending I'm a regular teenager. A regular teenager posing as a twenty-something adult. I lay my head back on his shoulder and let the music wash over me. I feel his lips grazing along the side of my neck and wonder who he thinks is watching. And then, since I'm already in the world of make believe, I let myself think about the possibility that this could be real. It sometimes works that way. Sam and Emily have what seems to be a legit relationship.

It scares me, though. Even if I could handle the inevitable ups and downs, I would hate the uncertainty surrounding zero year. I don't know what Sam and Emily are going to do about that period of separation and deprogramming. They don't do anything crazy with your memory, supposedly, but something must happen during that transition; three out of five outgoing Sundial agents rejoin Volturi.

Edward's whispered voice in my ear jolts me from my train of thought. It's not the SatCom—it's his real voice, his real breath.

"What if I…" I feel his lips wrap around my earlobe, and his teeth tease my skin. It tickles. The instant his teeth begin to bear down—so gently—I realize what he's doing and suck in a breath, which I know he hears on his SatCom. It makes him gasp and release me.

He laughs a chest-rumbling low laugh. "Oh, God. That was weird."

I twist around to face him, grinning in spite of myself. "That's not the intended purpose of this highly sophisticated technology, mister."

"Can you blame me? It was calling to me." He frames my face with his hands. As the house lights go up, indicating the end of the show, he leans in to kiss the corner of my mouth. "And anyhow, it's in your body. I say use it however you want."

I shake my head. He has a subversive streak, this one. And I just might like it.

"What's gotten into you?"

"I don't know." He hugs me tight and lifts me off my feet. "I was thinking about how it might be, you know. In a few years. Not that long at all, really."

He never talks like this. It's like saying it out loud makes it into something he might lose. Tonight, though, he seems to be lightening up.

I look around for my friends as we get ready to go. Alice doesn't need our help getting the attention of her bass player, after all. She sends him off with her number before climbing into a cab with Rose, and Edward and I start to look for one of our own.

+x+x+x+x+x+

It never fails to amaze me when my conditioning kicks in. It's true what they say in training: In that moment, you won't think. Your body just reacts.

One minute, I'm climbing into a cab and narrowing my eyes at the driver's knuckles clenching the steering wheel. Prison tattoos. One sideways look at Edward tells me he sees what I see. The next minute, a lane change toward the left, when we need to be turning right, sets us both in motion. I have the driver's seat belt up around his neck, and Edward's cracked a jagged wedge off of the credit card reader and is holding it to his ribs.

I stab my boot heel at the compartment in Edward's bag where his GoDoze gas packs should be stowed. I have to twist my neck a bit to get the treated fabric of my shirt into my mouth, but I manage. Edward does the same with his own shirt. This filters most of the toxin out.

"This is simple," Edward says, his words muffled but understandable. "Pull over slowly. You have ten seconds before you're asleep at the wheel. Don't make me steer this car from the back seat."

The driver complies, not looking all that surprised. Edward and I tumble out of our respective doors and breathe fresh air while the driver slumps. I'm on the SatCom immediately.

"You son of a bitch, Aro."

"Well done!" His amused exclamation irritates me. "Quickest of the bunch. Oh, I just knew a felon taxi driver would be too obvious."

"Was that really necessary?" Edward glowers, barking over the SatCom to Aro. He spits on the ground. GoDoze tastes like burned rubber.

"One of your colleagues apparently needed to learn the hard way that there's a reason we launder all of our clothes with AntiDoze."

I cringe. "Finch?" Edward, listening in beside me, rolls his eyes. Jacob is a good kid, but he needs to get his act together sometimes.

"He'll be fine," Aro says. "He's brushing up on his orienteering as we speak. He should make it to Tacoma by morning. Oh, and the drill has already begun, if you hadn't guessed. That's your ride now."

A shiny black town car pulls up to the curb.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Aro is apparently bored with our standard routine, because on top of starting our clinic a day early, he's making it come-as-you-are.

"You won't always be wearing technical gear when we mobilize you," he explains. He tents his fingers and pinches his lips together when Sam and Emily walk in, glaring at him. They're both barefoot and wearing pajamas. Leah was apparently at the gym, judging from her outfit.

Aro assures me he'll have my bag picked up so as not to arouse Charlie's suspicion and tells me Miss Violet is already safely bedded down at the vet's office. And he promises me I won't be sent to my math meet wearing what will at that point be an extremely dirty pair of skinny jeans and probably ruined ankle boots. I wasn't lying when I said I could run in these—I just would have preferred not to.

It's late, so Aro releases us to our bunks.

I catch Edward looking at my shoes wistfully. He says out loud what I'm thinking. "Goodbye, special tall shoes."

+x+x+x+x+x+

By breakfast, our group is complete—and then some. Edward scowls into his oatmeal bowl when Bree fills a plate with scrambled eggs and sits down at the end of our long bench. I kick him under the table. He wipes his face with a napkin and says good morning to her. I know it's the situation that bothers him, not her personally. But she doesn't know that.

I try calling the vet about Miss Violet, but it goes into voicemail. Edward offers to keep trying for me, but I'd rather handle it myself. It's the least I can do for her.

In the town car on the way to Bree's appointment, she keeps touching her ears.

"Do you want to feel mine? It's okay." I pull my hair out of the way.

She touches my earlobe tentatively. The SatCom switch is a small, cushiony disc under the surface.

"It's not too different from getting your ears pierced. It hurts less, actually." I move her fingers to the area behind my ear.

"The transmitter is here, just under the skin. The pick-up—that's sort of like a microphone—goes in a cap on your incisor. Also painless." I smile wide so she can see that my teeth look normal. "And the earlobe is the switch. Go on, try it."

She bites her lip and presses her small fingertips together at the center of my earlobe. "Phoenix to Big Bird, hello. Hummingbird is here. She's just getting a feel for how this works. Say hi, Hum." I wait while she says hello. "He says hi back. And he says to tell you it's no sweat."

She nods. Her eyes are wide. "They can only hear? Not, like, see me?"

"They can't see you. Absolutely not. And…it helps if you just think of it as Aro. Just one person, not a vague _they_." She smiles, relaxing a bit. "He'll only hear you when you want him to—only when you open the channel up because you need something. I remember one year I outgrew four pairs of tennis shoes and kept asking for new ones. That sort of thing."

She chuckles, looking at her own feet.

"And the other thing that will happen is Aro will page you if he needs to alert you about something." I know she's heard all this before, but I think it might help her to hear me confirm it.

"What about my second channel?"

"Oh. Well, you'll get the hardware today, but they won't activate that until you start doing partner work, which isn't for another few years."

"Cool." She spends the rest of the ride looking out the window, absent-mindedly fiddling with her ponytail.

The procedure only takes about two hours. Bree emerges wearing a new, ruffled clip to keep her hair pulled back. Before we leave the clinic, Jenks pulls me aside to give me my monthly immunizations shot.

"Thought you'd want to know that your little dog is on the mend."

"What? Jay…how do you even know about that?"

He shrugs and widens his eyes in a _don't-kill-the-messenger_ gesture. "I just work here. She has Lyme disease, which is treatable. She'll be good as new."

I feel a curious mix of relief at this good news and annoyance to be hearing it this way. I should be the one talking to my vet about this.

Bree sits up, alert. "Lyme disease comes from ticks. What kind of dog is she? Did you take her camping recently?"

"She's a mutt—mostly terrier. And you're right. But no, no camping." I shake my head. "Do mice carry ticks?"

As we make our way back to the car, she starts listing off all the various animals that could be responsible. I do some calculations in my head that make me wonder just how long mice have been getting into my basement—and why.

+x+x+x+x+x+

My irritation with Aro is easily funneled into competitive drive when our weapons drill begins. Edward and I are teamed with Emily and Bree against Sam, Leah, and Jake. We have to assemble our weapons from parts hidden around the complex, so there is strategy involved on top of technical shooting skills. Bree turns out to have a brilliant instinct for subterfuge.

At one point, she starts to make a brazen move—wandering into a clearing to divert attention from the rest of us. It's obvious she's banking on her naïveté. Sympathy-baiting. Edward mutters under his breath and leaps forward to pull her back behind cover. She's naïve like a fox, this one. And Edward has always hated that tactic.

We dominate the team round easily. We break for food, disband the teams, and resume shooting at robotic targets until the sun goes down. My shoes keep sinking into the spongy ground, but the tradeoff is they make it easier to climb trees. When Aro gathers us around the fireplace for downloading, I begrudgingly admit the exercise was useful.

We sit through a PowerPoint about the latest biohazards and review Interpol's most wanted list before Aro sends us off to get some sleep.

"One moment, Bella. Edward, this concerns you, too." Aro waits until the room empties before going on. "You'll be glad to know I had Jenks add Depo to Bella's immunizations, going back to March now. So you're in the clear."

"You did what?" I shake my head. I must have misheard.

"Depo. Provera. It prevents ovulation and inhibits sperm penetration. You may know it as medroxypro—"

I hear myself gasp and see a look of shock on Edward's face.

"I know what it is, Aro. You didn't think to inform me beforehand? What if I was already on the pill?"

Edward frowns. "Were you?"

"No. That's not the point. If I wanted to be, I would be." I'm seething so much I see white. I press my fingers to my temples. "I can take care of myself."

Aro raises his eyebrows and nods knowingly. What he says next is, I think, designed to enrage me completely.

"If the idea of purposely getting pregnant occurred to you, you should know it has no bearing on your eligibility as an agent. My bosses don't look kindly on me putting pregnant teens in the field, but I have had occasion to convince them. My policy is to make it a moot point."

He knows he's gone too far with this statement. I can feel my mouth opening and closing wordlessly as he turns his back on me and walks away. I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the floor.

Edward kneels down next to me. "He's a jackass."

I put my face into my hands and bite back a scream. "Uh. Yeah. What was your first hint? The suggestion that I can't be trusted to handle something so important as my own birth control? The idea that I would purposely get knocked up as a way to get dismissed? Jesus Christ! What sort of monster…"

Edward cringes. "Keep your voice down."

"He just assumes we're sleeping together. Like we would just fall into bed because it's convenient and…like—whatever, we might as well or something." My hands are flying all over the place. "Does that sound right to you? Or does that sound cheap?"

He seems at a loss for what to say. I've never seen so many facial expressions cross his face in so short a time. I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them.

"I…I don't know how to help. He's just used to thinking about us as puppets. You can't let him get to you."

"And now I feel like if something ever does happen between us, it's like…tainted." I hide my face by burying it in my folded arms. Great. Me and my pity party. "It's not like I've never thought about it."

He's quiet for a long time. When he speaks, it sounds like a sigh.

"Bella….what do you want?"

I want so many things. I want to tell him how it felt in my heart when I heard Miss Violet would be okay, and that mice have been getting into the basement since before crews tore up the street. I want to have a simple conversation with him without worrying about who's listening and what they'll think. I want the adventure of figuring out what's behind that decoder, but I want to be able to click _quit game_ when the fun part is over. And I want to know how things would be if I was just a girl he met in gym class one day. How he would kiss me, if that was our world. _If _he would.

It's too much—all of it. I tip my head back and try to breathe evenly. Edward drapes an arm around me and lets me lean my head on his shoulder.

+x+x+x+x+x+

**AN:** A big thank you to happymelt, midsouthmama, and faireyfan for their tremendous help this time and always! And thank YOU, reader, for reading! I always love hearing your thoughts. Oh! If anyone has a hankering for some eerily beautiful mid-19th century New England boatwright slash (and who doesn't?), check out **The Shipyard** by plummy (whose Love in Idleness is also beyond amazing).


	5. Three or Four Dimensions

**AN: **Sorry for the long delay this time! Stuff came up. Mostly good stuff, but time-consuming. Should be back on track now! Thank you so much for reading. This chapter is brought to you by beta **happymelt** and prereaders **midsouthmama** and** faireyfan**. There's also a banner made by a brilliant person I'll call midsouthpapa if you want to go through the trouble of replacing all these tedious dots http:/i1185 (dot) photobucket (dot) com/albums/z353/LifeInTheSnow/MSVbanner (dot) jpg Enjoy!

+x+x+x+x+x+

**Chapter 5: Three or Four Dimensions**

I straighten the row of sharpened pencils on my desk. Two are usually enough, but I always make sure to have four. I confirm my wristwatch is in sync with the clock on the wall. My teammates, I'm sure, are doing the same. The room is humming with quiet, nervous energy—remarkably different from the tense, hostile energy I left behind at the Volturi complex an hour ago.

I can feel my breathing begin to even out, knowing that for the next four hours I have the chance to trade my usual mental turmoil for the steady, controlled pressure of a math tournament. These things put me into a trance, almost—a head space swarming with axioms and proofs, pulsing with the soothing rhythm of parsing and solving problems. There is comfort in these absolute values, rights and wrongs, numbers conforming to patterns, and rules that have nothing to do with loyalties or politics and everything to do with certainty.

After last night, I need the diversion. Aro's meddling had me seething with rage, and Edward decided to distract me by making me talk about the one thing that is precious and pure in all of this: Us. Him. My feelings.

Of course, I shut him down. Of course. If I ever do find a way to know what I feel or to say what I know, I want it to be as far away from Aro's world as we can get. And I need to remember we may never get very far away—not both of us. Not together.

And so when he asked me what I wanted, I stalled. And then I cried for a while. And then I gave him a safe answer. I said I wanted what was already familiar, for nothing to change, for him to be free to do his job without adding emotions into the mix. More emotions, anyways.

When I look up from my desk to see him slipping into a seat at the back of the viewing gallery, I can see his favorite neutral expression draped over his face like a mask. It's been there since last night. There's something new, though, when he meets my gaze. He looks…sheepish. I narrow my eyes at him from across the room, and he presses his lips together, shaking his head ever so slightly.

Great. Whatever it is will have to wait because I can hear the moderator tapping the podium, telling us it's almost time to start.

+x+x+x+x+x+

The meet seems to fly by. The written portion is tough this year, but the challenge feels good—like cracking my knuckles. One boy snaps his pencil in half and storms out in the middle of it, muttering. The kids from Redmond, our only real competition, put up some good scores during timed sprints but bicker during the team heat, losing time. We're ahead by a comfortable enough margin that I purposely tank a question in the ciphering round, knowing it will put Angela up for the individual lightning finals. She can do this, and the win will help her out on her college applications. I amuse myself by watching Ben fist-pump every time Angela presses her hand-held buzzer with solution after solution.

And then it's all over. There's nothing left to do but shake hands and collect blue ribbons—and the study guides for statewide.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Edward is waiting on the sidewalk out front. He congratulates my teammates and turns to me, smirking, as soon as they walk away toward Angela's car.

"Looks like you need to brush up on simple ciphers, Swan."

"Whatever. I didn't feel like going up for the head-to-head. Too much attention."

"You put Angela up there on purpose."

I shrug.

I follow Edward to a borrowed company car at the far side of the lot and toss my bag in the back seat. Once I settle in, I breathe a sign of relief, realizing we have the rest of our Sunday free. I think of the Cambodian decoder lens hidden in my locker at school. We could easily break in to retrieve it, but who knows what that will lead to. I just want to chill out for a while.

I call Charlie and fill him in on the highlights. He tells me he's proud of me and that he'll take me to a special dinner on his next night off. He gives me an update on Miss Violet, whom he'd picked up from the vet this morning. We hang up, and I look out the window. The road isn't familiar. I shoot a questioning look at Edward.

"I thought we'd take the long way home—up through the far side of the Sound. Is that all right?"

"Sure. Can we get some lunch, too? Chowder, maybe?"

He smiles. "That sounds genius."

We're both quiet for a long while. For once, it doesn't feel like we're biting our tongues, afraid of being overheard. It just feels restful. Fog mists the windshield from time to time. Columns of evergreens rush by on both sides, blurring into a velvety blanket of mossy green. We go for miles without passing a single house; when we do, I find myself wondering what it's like to live in this isolated place. Are these people hermits and misanthropes? Or are they hiding in some way?

When we tromp through the door of a little chowder house in one of the port towns, I giggle, imagining how we look to people. I'm in my math contest apparel—a comfortable, plain skirt and cardigan with tights and flats—while Edward is in filthy jeans, a trucker hat, and a mis-buttoned flannel shirt.

It's a little brisk out, but we ask to be seated on the open-air terrace, near the noisy and scenic marina. Edward squints at me after we place our orders. "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking the two of us probably look like a schoolgirl and a juvenile delinquent on the run."

"Hmm. Aren't we, though?" He seems amused.

I look over his shoulder to where a row of small boats bob and sway at the dock. A feeling of intense yearning comes over me all at once. And I must have used up all my discipline this morning at the math tournament because I suddenly blurt out what I'm thinking.

"We could be, you know." I cast my eyes around the area quickly, then lean in to whisper, "We could be in Canada by nightfall. Leave the car. Jack a boat. I know how to pilot one of those things."

He looks down to where my hand is gripping his, then glances up at my face again, sighing. "Bella. You're not serious."

"Why can't I be?" I don't even really care who might be listening. This type of tantrum—and that's what it feels like—is more or less expected of Sundial kids.

"You know why. A thousand reasons. Charlie. Miss Violet. Looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives."

He's right, of course. But I feel stubborn in this moment, and I don't want to let it drop. "Don't you ever just want to say 'so what?' Teenagers do impulsive things all the time."

"Teenagers might, but we don't." He grimaces and leans in closer. "Look, I get it. You don't have to prove your point, all right?"

I frown. "What point am I proving?"

"That we shouldn't let…strong emotions mix us up. I thought more about it after you went to bed, and you're right. We would make stupid decisions if we were…you know. Swept up." He flaps a hand around in the air when he says this. "It wouldn't be safe."

He sits bolt upright, and I realize a server is hovering over us with our lunch order. I have no idea how long she's been standing there. He lifts an eyebrow at me as if to say _See what I mean?_

I barely care. I concentrate on my chowder, waiting out the swirl of emotions swarming inside me right now. It occurs to me that my hormones are out of whack due to yesterday's Depo shot, which is cause for yet another surge of bile.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Back in the car, Edward fills me in on what I missed in the morning briefing. There's been some new activity disturbing the supply lines feeding three big pharma corporations, which Aro suspects is the work of healthcare rights vigilantes. There are more and more of them now that the boomers have reached retirement age—or chronic disease age, as Aro puts it. He's assigned Jake and Leah on a chemical forensics detail, having them trace the source of the tainted materials.

Sam and Emily have one final job as partners sometime in the next few weeks, after which she'll transition out. Sam will go solo at that point but will serve as Bree's mentor. In the meantime, Bree is moving closer to active status.

Edward clears his throat. "So…um. Aro observed her in the field this weekend and decided she was ready for her first assignment. Like, now." He takes his eyes off the road to read my expression.

I shake my head. "That's ridiculous. She's too young. Is he talking simple surveillance, or…you know?"

"I feel the same way. I think he meant something big. He used the phrase _baptism by fire_."

The creep. I can just picture his gleeful expression. Edward glances back and forth between me and the road a few times, not saying anything more. This is what he does when he's waiting for me to draw my own conclusions. When it comes to me, I sigh.

"You volunteered to take the assignment, didn't you? This is what you looked so guilty about this morning."

He flexes his jaw. "Sorry. I forgot it would affect you, too. I just did it without thinking."

This makes me smile in spite of myself. "I don't mind. Do you even know the details?"

"We'll find out this week."

"And nothing more about our long job?"

"I think it involves infiltrating a hospital or government agency. He sent some new sets of FauxPrint fingertips for both of us."

"So, something with a background check, then."

"I guess. And he asked for our major test dates and things so we can schedule around that stuff."

"That was considerate of him." I shake my head and huff. Edward looks wary again, chewing on the inside of his cheek. I have to laugh—he's so exasperating. "What, dude? What else?"

"I asked him not to schedule us anything that conflicts with prom, okay?" He rolls his eyes at himself. "I think we should go."

After everything else the weekend has brought, I can only giggle at this. My life is officially absurd. "Edward Cullen, did you just ask me to prom? Because maybe I should hold out for someone sluttier, you know? Someone I know will put out."

He mock-glares at me, the color rising in his cheeks. And it makes me want to needle him more.

"It's kind of a time-honored rite of passage, losing your virginity on prom night."

He blinks rapidly. "Don't remind me."

"I know, I know—typical teenagers are typical."

"Something like that." He scowls.

"Yes, I'll go to prom with you. Please make it a wrist corsage." I know at least this much from Rose. What will the girls think when I tell them? A strange feeling settles in the pit of my stomach—a combination of fluttery excitement and regret at admitting I care about something like prom. "And no carnations."

"Brat."

"Oh, stop. You love me."

"You have no idea. Now will you pass me my wallet for the bridge toll?"

+x+x+x+x+x+

Edward stops in to say hello to Miss Violet when he drops me off. She's energetic and excitable, her pink tongue lolling out of her mouth as she prances in place. I scoop her up.

"Wow. She looks better," Edward says.

I suddenly remember that I haven't told Edward what I pieced together about the mice in the basement. "Let's take her for a walk."

Charlie's friend Harry at the end of the block has a woodshop in his garage, and he often works with the door wide open. Miss Violet loves to chase the curlicue wood shavings when he blows them with his compressed air gun; the white noise comes in handy for me. I give Edward the rundown of events—the street construction project that seemed to be followed by my mouse problem, and Miss Violet's tick bite predating all of it.

"What do you think it means?"

"I guess we should just start by looking around in the basement? See if there's a little hole where mice can get in?"

He nods slowly. "And…what's so secret that we're talking about this out in the street? Do you think Volturi is using mice as henchmen now?"

"I'm just paranoid, I guess." I shift back and forth from one foot to the other, keeping my head close to his. "If they are involved…if they deliberately did this to my dog…I don't think I can get past it."

"So, you can tolerate being injected with hormones without your knowledge—but this is the thing that puts you over?"

"At least Aro believes he's justified in pumping me full of Depo as misguided as he is. But if they would go after an innocent little dog—and for what, to remind me they have control?—there's no limit to what they would do."

Miss Violet starts yipping at something down the street, and I turn to see a car pulling up in front of my house. Charlie is home.

"Your dad."

"My dad."

+x+x+x+x+x+

In the morning at school, Edward seeks me out between first and second period. He looks rested and cleaned up, and he's wearing the sort of grin that takes over his whole face. He pulls me by the elbow into a stairwell at the end of the hallway.

He pulls the old clunker laptop out of his backpack and hands it over, newly configured for maximum anonymity. My made-up username, NiceBoots, is written on a post-it. He shows me a second post-it, with my password: bieberbaby.

"You're such an ass! I can change it, right?"

He chuckles, tearing up the note. He knows I know perfectly well I can change it. "Why is that a problem, but not the username?"

"Whatever." I shove him lightly. Why do the weirdest things fluster me?

"Hey, gimme some credit. It's the perfect password that no one would guess."

The second bell rings, and the hallways quiet down. We're both officially late for class by now.

There's something thrilling about the idea that we'll be using these laptops for nothing but standard chitchat—away from prying eyes. I shove the laptop in my bag and hand Edward the decoder lens I've retrieved from my locker.

I lower my voice. "Here. Did you bring the book? Should we take a look?"

"Let's—oh, shit. Someone's coming." He pulls me close to him so the decoder is trapped between us, and all I can feel is his face, warm and bristly, against my face and the pressure of his arms around me. I realize I know how to do this—it's easy, really. I attack his mouth with mine, not even thinking about it. His breath is hot. He lifts a knee in between my legs and pulls me closer, mauling me with his lips like—well, like a teenager making out. Page three, section B in our manual. Christ, he's good at this. He even groans a little.

I hear the squeak of sneakers on the stairs and muffled giggling. Whoever it is passes us by, muttering _Get a room_ with exaggerated annoyance.

When they're out of earshot, after what seems like forever, he lifts his head and releases a puff of breath. "I thought we were busted."

I can feel his heart beating in his chest. It feels good. A little too good. "Yeah. Close call. You can let go of me, I think."

He nods but doesn't release me. "Actually, I need a minute, okay? Let me, um, calm down." He closes his eyes, eyebrows clustering together.

"Calm—oh." I freeze, suddenly very aware that he's holding my hips still, away from his body.

"It's just…the friction." The sound of his voice just now does something strange to me; it's so quiet and defenseless.

"Sure. Okay." I press my fingertips to my lips. They feel puffy.

He opens one eye, searching my face. "We might need to practice this. You know—acclimate." Only the tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth lets me know he's teasing.

"Nice try." I wiggle my hand that's trapped between us, still holding the lens decoder. "We have work to do."

It's too late to make it to class now. Edward points to the top of the staircase, where we can be relatively certain of being undisturbed until third period.

+x+x+x+x+x+

The pool is usable, finally, but nobody knew to bring swimwear today. Instead, we get a lecture on pool safety and rules. The whole class stands around on the damp, cool tile, barefoot, our jeans rolled up Tom Sawyer-style. The air is tangy with chlorine.

Rose stares at the placid surface of the water, mesmerized. "It's so weird to think this much water is just sitting here in our school, you know? All day long. A huge cube of water."

Alice chuckles. Edward catches my eye, quirking an eyebrow. He knows if he were to ask, I'd say it's roughly 11,700 cubic feet of water. So what.

He turns to Rose. "Know how to swim?"

"Yeah." Rose juts her chin toward Alice, who is chewing her lip. "This one needs to learn."

"Me, too." He shrugs.

I'm not the only one surprised by this news. I wonder if it's true. I've waded in chin-deep water with him, but I've never seen him swim.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Back at my place, Edward tosses aside the Hemingway book and switches off my UV light. "Nothing."

After finding no encoded messages at all this morning, we decided to try combining the decoder lens with different spectrums of light, but none of it has panned out.

He laughs lightly, stretching his arms above his head. He turns up the volume on my noise machine. "We've been inventing conspiracies, I think. Someone should do a psychological study on the effects of being a teenage agent."

"I'm sure we're already the unwitting subjects. Come on. To the basement, now." We might as well follow up on all the dangling threads. He gets to his feet and lumbers down the stairs after me.

We don't find any more dead mice, nor any evidence of live mice. Miss Violet sniffs around while Edward and I check for gaps in the concrete foundation. Nothing. There's a drain in the floor of the laundry room, and Edward speculates that mice might have gotten in that way. It seems plausible to me. He asks me if we ever get flooding in the basement and begins checking for water stains on an old Persian rug covering the floor in the storage area.

Before I even realize what's happening, he folds a corner back and starts peeling the rug away from the floor. Beneath it is a second rug. I can hear my pulse in my ears. Beneath that second rug is a large slide bolt. In the floor. Goosebumps spring up across my bare arms.

Edward looks at me, his eyes wide. "Holy shit."

Embedded there, mottled and stained with what looks like a decade's worth of corrosion, a dozen feet below where Charlie watches the Mariner's game and a yard away from where I do my laundry, is a three-foot by four-foot hatch door.

+x+x+x+x+x+


	6. Simple Subtraction

**Chapter 6: Simple Subtraction**

Most people my age probably haven't given much thought to how they might die. I make a daily practice of it. It's not that I enjoy thinking morbid thoughts…it just seems prudent to consider the possibilities. It helps me stay levelheaded in stressful moments—like now, when a mysterious bolted door separates my partner and me from any number of fates.

A good part of our Sundial training involves imagining situations that might develop and how we'd escape safely. Right now, for instance, I know where my exit routes are (up the stairs and out the unlocked front door; through a basement window I'd need to smash) and what weapons are within reach (an aluminum bat; the washing machine hosing; worst case scenario, my lighter and the gas main).

Logically, it makes sense to imagine not escaping, too. If I'm about to die and have the luxury of knowing it, will I still make every last decision with integrity, with a level head? Will I be calm and collected enough to minimize collateral damage? And when the time comes, is there anything I'll regret? Anything that's in my power to change, anyway?

This last part troubles me, because I don't know whether I'm supposed to change my feelings or the thing itself. I drank three beers in a row last summer at a Fourth of July party in Rose's uncle's backyard just to know what it felt like to be tipsy. That's one less thing on my list. Edward made fun of me in the morning when I was hung over for our team call…and he made me promise not to do it again, unless we were together. Not that I'm eager to do it again. Not now that I'm rid of that nagging not-knowing feeling.

There are more things on that list. It's growing, actually.

The drum of my heartbeat in my ears brings me back into the moment. Probably three seconds have passed since Edward and I registered this new development. His eyes stay locked on mine while a silent conversation passes between the two of us.

Our decision-making process is so deeply ingrained: To evaluate a potential threat, isolate the unknown elements from the known. Assign severity and likelihood to various risks. Calculate. Act.

What we know: There's a hatch embedded in the floor of the basement of the home I grew up in. We know that it's been here for a long time. Years. Maybe more years than I've been involved with Sundial.

What we don't know: who or what's beyond the door—or who might be responsible.

I hand Edward his bag but hang back, scanning the room once more with new eyes. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. Miss Violet blithely sniffs the laundry basket on the other side of the room. Edward uses a swab and his BioSafe canister to test the corroded, warped edges of the hatch for toxins or gasses. He passes me the canister so I can read the display. _Biological particles consistent with ordinary mold._

He drags his fingers through the dust on an old armoire, making the shape of a striped triangle that indicates a fallout shelter. He raises his eyebrows at me—a silent question mark.

I guess it's possible. I shrug. The gap at the edge of the hatch is probably big enough for a mouse to squeeze through. They don't need much room at all.

He folds his arms, staring hard at the hatch door. I know that he's contemplating calling in the Volturi emergency guard, who would arrive in moments in nondescript repairman's garb and either explain or demolish whatever it is underneath the basement. That call would be heard by all active agents in the region, including Carlisle and Esme, which would blow my cover with them.

I think we can handle this ourselves, and I know Edward can guess what I'm thinking. He's always the more cautious one, swayed by imagined consequences rather than calculated risk. The only reason he's considering going along with me, I'm guessing, is that he can imagine positive consequences as well as negative. For example, if this turns out to be a simple root cellar, we'll have the pleasure of sharing this new type of secret—a small and thrilling place to escape to.

"Let's try it. We can at least unlatch the bolt. If it's also bolted from the other side, we have a problem. If not, I think we have the upper hand," I say, keeping my voice low. I don't really care if we're overheard. In fact, if this whole adventure goes badly, anything Aro will have heard becomes a clue. Edward mulls this over, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

He toes the flat surface of the hatch with his shoe, tapping three times to activate the UltraAudio embedded in the sole. He shakes his head to tell me he hears nothing. And with a sigh and a slump of his shoulders, he tells me he's ready.

"Wait." I loop a utility cord through Miss Violet's collar and anchor her to the stair rail. I hand Edward the aluminum baseball bat and back halfway up the stairs, keeping our exit path in view. I check my phone, making sure I have a signal. "Okay. Open it."

He wrests the rusty bolt loose with some effort. He looks at me again, his face stony, before creaking the heavy hatch open. He rears back, but only because of a musty odor. I smell it, too. Lights below the entryway flicker on automatically, casting a glow on his face. He crouches and peers down into the hole, looking back at me with an unreadable expression. When I see his posture relax, though, it's enough. I let out a shaky breath.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Trust is such a strange phenomenon. It seems abstract, yet it has the power to calm a racing heart and restore erratic brainwaves. It's the thing that keeps stress and shock from killing people. There's research on it and everything. The human brain needs it so much, I think, that we are willing to explain away almost anything before we allow ourselves to let go of trust.

And so when I step off the bottom rung of the rickety ladder into a plain, sparsely furnished room, my first instinct is to tell myself that Charlie must have forgotten to tell me about this place. That it can't be a secret he'd keep from me, because Charlie doesn't have secrets. Not like this. I loosen my grip on Edward's warm hand.

There's nothing here but a sagging futon, covered with a thin blanket, and a few dusty items of clothing. Some record albums spill out of a cardboard box, and a yellowed concert poster droops on one wall. A set of storage shelves stand empty of whatever emergency provisions they must have held at some point. Nothing dangerous, and nothing worth hiding.

Without the looming specter of some nefarious attack scheme, there is only the question of whether Charlie knows this is here—and if so, why he's kept it hidden. But even that doesn't concern me. After all, it's just an old fallout shelter.

I sink down on the futon, relieved to discover it isn't damp. I feel so tired and heavy all of a sudden. Edward eases himself down next to me, moving with exaggerated caution. I'm sitting on something lumpy, which turns out to be a cardigan sweater with patches on the elbows. I smooth it out and fold it into a neat square.

"Are you all right?" Edward asks. He's watching me with a wary look on his face.

"Nothing should surprise me anymore. Seriously." I tilt my head back and stare at the ceiling. I surprise myself by laughing bitterly. "Hah! Would it kill us to just lighten up once in a while? Imagine if Alice came across a bomb shelter in her basement. She'd throw the hatch wide open and turn it into a…music room or something."

He frowns.

"We could do that, you know. Why don't we? Just—ugh. Who cares?" I start looking around for electrical outlets, imagining strings of Christmas tree lights ringing the room.

"I mean…Bella. Look again." He covers my hands with his—my hands that are clenched tightly around the wool cardigan. He practically has to pry my fingers loose. The elbow patches feel familiar, but hazy-familiar, like in a dream.

I realize I'm trembling. It's like my body is aware of what's happening before my brain is. I let myself get folded into his arms, burying my nose in the soft fabric and skin at the crease where his neck meets his shoulder. I take a deep breath.

"I guess this was my mother's."

He only hums in response. I let my eyes wander around the room again, really seeing, finally.

These were her things. It's more of her than I can remember seeing together in one place. Her crocheted lap blanket—a patchwork of yarn I've only ever seen in photos from my childhood, including the one on my dresser. Her Sonic Youth poster on the wall. Her Soundgarden and Nirvana records, a fine layer of ruinous dust covering the vinyl that peeks out from one of the sleeves. There's even a strand of her hair caught in the fibers of this grungy cardigan.

I have to admit to myself that when I indulge in missing my mom, I'm usually thinking of who she might have been in my life today. I'm not used to thinking of her as a person with a whole world of her own before me—as a Seattle teenager listening to records in her secret sub-basement room not long before I was born. And, really, not that many years before she died.

I wonder what my face looks like to Edward, if he can even see my face…or if I should be embarrassed that he's witnessing something so personal. I don't feel embarrassed.

"She grew up in this house, you know. Moved out when she married my dad, but when Gran and Grandpa moved to San Diego, she bought the place from them."

"I could see anybody our age loving this place," he says. His arms are still circled comfortably around my waist. He rests his chin on my shoulder. "She probably would have wanted you to have it for yourself when the time was right. Do you think she would have been cool like that?"

"Yeah," I say. I can feel Edward's lips move to the back of my neck—a strange mix of comforting and exciting. I don't want to think about this too hard. "Not sure she would have let me lock myself in here with you, though."

He stills for a moment, as if he's waiting for me to pull away. When I don't, he uses his hands to gather my hair to the side and goes on kissing my neck and massaging my shoulders. "Do you think she'd suspect me of trying to steal your virtue?"

Yes. Without a doubt, yes. "Aren't you, though?"

His chest rumbles against my back. "Depends. Does virtue mean virginity? The answer is either never or not today."

This makes heat rise to the surface of my skin. I know he feels it because he brushes his lips along my hairline where I must be flushed pink.

"Are you asking what it means to me? Or to my mom?"

"This is a strange conversation. To the modern world. To you." His fingers are nestled in my hair again.

"What do you think it means?"

"Virtue? I think virtue means…goodness and worth. And I couldn't make a dent in yours in a million years. No matter where I convince you to let me put my hands or my mouth. Or my…anything else."

Jesus Christ. I twist around to face him, tucking my knees underneath me and staying close enough that his hands stay buried in my hair. "This all sounds like what a very smooth-talking villain might say."

"Mm-hmm. That's a fallacy, and you know it. _A dicto simpliciter_. The specific taken for the general." He bites his lip. The intensity in his face doesn't match the lightness of his voice. He blinks once and then closes his eyes again for a long moment, capturing an image.

I giggle. "Now you're using logic to make me swoon. That's a low blow, Cullen."

"Never. I could never make you do anything. Would never." He relaxes back against the futon and moves his hands to my waist. He tugs the fabric of my shirt down where it's begun to ride up.

He waits until I look him in the eye. "Just kiss me, Bella."

I don't know what happened to not letting our hormones complicate things. Maybe it's a factor of being in this safe haven, feeling secure and protected. Maybe it's the sobering discovery of my mother's well-loved possessions abandoned and unused, a forlorn tableau that says _life is short_.

I lean in and kiss him, and it feels like something. The opposite of regret. It may be dank and musty in this airless cellar, but his blood is hot and coursing under his skin, and his ragged breath is sweet and confusing, the way it burns me up and cools on my skin. He holds back and follows my lead, letting me get used to this new sensation of being ruled by my impulses. I like learning how he reacts, imagining how it feels to him, the little ways I can make it even better.

"Yeah," he says when I move to straddle his lap. His voice is half breath. "Okay."

I'm surprised when I feel his fingers wrap around my ankles. He holds on as if he doesn't trust himself to touch me elsewhere. I try to remember if I shaved my legs this morning. When I tense up, he shakes his head.

"Shh. Just relax. You're killing me here, but don't stop."

I rise up and take in his pink face and sweaty hairline.

"How am I killing you?"

He blinks. "You're…I…hmm. Nothing a cold shower won't fix. Believe me, I like it."

"You can touch me, you know."

"No, I can't. I really can't. Not before you really know…" He chuckles and squeezes my ankles when he sees me frown. "I'm serious. I'll go too far. I think I would traumatize you. And poor Miss Violet, up there whining."

"I—"

"It's too soon." He takes my hands in his and brings them together to press them to his smiling lips. "Are you gonna tell your dad you know about this room?"

I climb off of his lap. "He'll lock it up and throw away the key."

"So…that's a no?"

I hate keeping things from my dad, but this seems harmless enough, relatively speaking. And there's surely a reason why he's kept it a secret all this time.

"I guess if I were in Charlie's position, I might want to shut this place away, too. Just based on his own memories. I mean…I might have been conceived on this futon."

Edward groans. "Don't. Ugh."

"Is your little room something like this?" I've never actually seen the passage hidden behind his bookcase.

"It's more like a tunnel. No place you'd spend time in." He twists his head, looking around. "And it's not private like this. Not soundproof."

"Think this is? Soundproof?"

He nods. "And if it was built to shield nuclear fallout, it probably shields transmitters."

I sit up straight and face him squarely. "Try it." I don't know why this idea thrills me, but it does.

Even though we're in the same room together, our SatCom system works by sending a signal to a satellite, which retransmits it to us and to the Volturi nerve center. The idea of being unreachable is so foreign to me. Frankly, it could be a problem. If our SatComs don't work in here and Aro tries to page us, it could trigger an unnecessary search mission.

Edward grins and reaches up to his earlobe. "May I speak to Phoenix, please? Come in, Phoenix."

"Oh." My face falls. "I heard you. I mean, on the SatCom."

He purses his lips and launches himself to standing. "That's odd." And just like that, he's back in investigator mode, tapping the walls and circling the perimeter.

I hear Aro's raspy voice in my ear. "What's going on? Big, can you not locate Phoenix?"

I pinch my earlobe to respond, noting that he seems to only be hearing the satellite feed; not anything a wire in the room would be transmitting to him.

"No. I'm here." I cringe at what I'm about to say. "We were just…playing around."

"Hmph. Very well. Carry on—but try to keep it PG-13 over the signal, if you can."

I roll my eyes. I watch Edward smooth his hands over the Sonic Youth poster. Even I can hear the hollow echo when he raps his fingers against it. When he peels it away from the wall, a flimsy panel is revealed, and he lifts this away from the wall, too.

The aroma of fresh packed earth fills the chamber. I see where our mice have been coming from, and what the crews using King County Energy equipment must have been doing in the street back in April.

It's an escape tunnel of my very own.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Auxiliary escape routes are a Volturi perk reserved for the most senior officers. I'd always assumed Edward's tunnel had more to do with him being placed with Carlisle and Esme than anything related to Sundial. But if I have one, too, there must be a plan behind it all—something Aro will disclose to me if and when he sees fit.

Edward covers up the hole again and scratches his head. "I don't understand that dude."

"Nope. Nobody does."

"Do we bring it up? Mention we know about it?"

"Just practice your surprised face. You know how he loves his big reveals."

He nods. We climb out of the room and secure the bolt and layers of carpets behind us. I like knowing that it can't be used as an entrance to my home, at least.

+x+x+x+x+x+

When I work my next volunteer shift at Evergreen, I take Edward with me. He wants to meet Mrs. Cope. She convinces him to play an old-fashioned card game, complaining that I'm no fun because I'm always calculating probabilities.

He snorts. "Tell me about it."

"I can't help it!" I laugh and turn back to organizing the library cart. They want me to sort the books by color instead of by alphabet, because people have an easier time remembering their favorite titles that way.

Mrs. Cope stays lucid during most of the game. At one point, she mistakes Edward for someone else. "Roger, would you believe Therese brought me her dresses to take in? Six dresses. She's lost a good deal of extra weight."

He raises his eyebrows and falters for just a second before giving her a neutral response. "Oh, really?"

"That soldier is going to marry her. I have a feeling for these things."

Edward nods and plays his turn. I allow myself to sneak a peek at her chart. Yes, she's on donepezil. And something else: oxycodone, in a rather large dose.

+x+x+x+x+x+

I drop by to visit my dad at the museum on a Saturday afternoon. He's not really supposed to socialize when he's manning a gallery, but he has me meet him in the cafeteria when it's time for his break.

"Didja see that Gaugin exhibit?"

"No, Dad. That's not really my thing."

"Too colonialist, right? Imposed primitivism reinforcing a subjugated eroticism?"

I almost choke on my sandwich. "What! Who did you overhear saying that?" This is an old game of his.

"Couple of ladies with hats. Those are the ones to listen to. Them and the ones who match the purse with the shoes." He's pleased with himself for making me laugh. His moustache twitches.

"How much longer do you think for these double shifts?"

"Miss your old man, do ya? Just let's wait until we see your financial aid packages. Then I'll be able to relax."

It drives me crazy that I can't tell him about the "scholarship" funding I know is coming from my Sundial trust. I make a mental note to get Aro to push the notification window up. "Okay, Dad. I'm fine—really—but I wish you had time to take a vacation or something. Do some fishing with Harry?"

He murmurs in agreement, promptly changing the subject. "I like your new haircut. You look…more grown up."

I thank him. I don't tell him I haven't had a haircut.

+x+x+x+x+x+

My chats with Edward using the stealth laptops are so mundane it's ridiculous—yet I'm giddy, all the same. _What are you eating? Did you write down which chapters we're supposed to read for English? I'll see you after brunch at A.'s tomorrow—sorry, girls only. Do you really not know how to swim?_

_Um, not nachos again. I promise. (Except…I lied, I am eating nachos. So salty and delicious!) Read through the part where Jane finds out he's already married. Sorry, spoiler alert. Save me some bacon in a napkin? Yes, really, I don't. You saw me in there._

I did see him in there—"there" being the pool, three times already this week. The beginners have mostly just been learning to float, clutching the pool's edge with both hands, foam floaters pinched between their knees. I've found myself mesmerized by the way the water rolls between his shoulder blades and the other lesser-known divots and subtle bulges that crisscross his back. Not only that—I'm allowed to stare. It's expected, even. Yesterday, Rose, waiting her turn at the diving board alongside me, put a hand on her hip, saying _Girl_. I looked at her and blushed.

_Yeah,_ I reply to Edward. _If you're pretending to learn, it's very convincing. _

_There's a lot I don't know how to do. ;) Next week we pair up. Lucky you. _

+x+x+x+x+x+

On Sunday, I'm home alone, chatting with Edward on the SatCom about a suspected biological weapon smuggling ring in Canada that we're supposed to follow up on later in the week. This is the worst type of job; even Aro admits he hates bioweapon traces, because protocol requires eliminating the carrier and quarantining the body, no matter what. And they're usually innocent bystanders—so we're told. Anyway, neither Edward nor I has had direct involvement before now. We're immunized regularly, of course. That's not the part that makes my stomach churn.

I never have a chance to get anxious about it, though, because in the middle of quizzing me about symptoms to watch for, Edward cuts off with a gasp. A split second later, I process the distinct _Ping! Ping!_ tone I've just heard.

"Did you hear that?"

My breath comes out in a squeak. Yes, I did. It wasn't my imagination. My knees turn to jelly, but I'm already in motion, racing down the stairs to the ground floor. I'm assaulted by a flurry of voices shouting in confusion over the SatCom. Overriding all of it, Aro barks instructions.

"All units evacuate. Protocol white. Thirty seconds to rendezvous. Sam—I mean King and Crow were in the field, hot." Aro is flustered.

I shout my all-clear code over the line—_ten twenty-six_—and hear Edward do the same. I hold my breath while, one by one, I mentally check off each of the other voices I need to hear. Jacob and Leah. Bree is next to pipe up, sounding shy. After an agonizing few seconds, we hear from Sam, his voice a desperate howl, and it isn't good: "Ten-forty five, Bravo. Fuck, she's—there's a lot of blood. Extract to Medivac, Aro. We've been compromised."

Emily. I let out a whoosh of breath and squint my eyes to focus on my buzzing wristwatch for instructions. Inexplicably, my micro-GPS is directing me out the front door and down the street to a waiting car, not through the escape tunnel designed expressly for this purpose. I file away the observation for another day. Right now, I'm only thinking of my colleague.

Our SatCom equipment is programmed with a security feature that alerts every user—_Ping! Ping!_—when a resource abruptly goes off line. I fear that sound more than anything on earth. Only one thing can trigger it: complete loss of blood flow to the surrounding tissue. I collapse into the cushiony leather back seat of the town car, letting tears sting my eyes. The SatCom is silent. There's nothing any of us can do now but regroup. And wait.

+x+x+x+x+x+

**AN: **Many thanks to beta** happymelt** and prereading duo **midsouthmama** and **faireyfan**!To save you a making a visit to medline, donepezil is a prescription sometimes given to treat dementia. Oxycodone is a powerful pain medication. **Thanks, everyone, for reading! **And for your reviews! I've only ever seen about two episodes of Lost but was amused by the comparisons when it comes to the hatch!


	7. Binding Operatives

**AN: **Apologies for the super-long delay! I had some work travel and other unexpected things come up, but mainly (I realize now) I was mentally stuck on working out a certain event that comes later in the story, and now that I've more definitively sorted out what happens, I feel much more at ease with everything that comes in between. So. Many thanks to **happymelt**, **midsouthmama**, and **faireyfan**, who beta and pre-read. Thank YOU for reading!

**Chapter 7: Binding Operators**

The agents' clinic is in lockdown mode, with the six of us and Aro holed up in a grey waiting room and Emily sequestered among surgeons and nurses somewhere beyond a pair of heavy steel doors. All nonessential personnel have been released. Jenks sallies back and forth with news for Aro from time to time. Sam paces. He's changed out of his bloodstained clothes, but his long dark hair is greasy or worse.

"Listen up." Aro is the picture of calm, having had a good ninety minutes to compose himself since what he's now calling an 'unfortunate accident.' "I know you're—we're—all focused on Emily, but I'd be failing you if I didn't address how this incident affects our work."

Edward is the only one who makes eye contact with Aro. The rest of us gaze out of windows or at the floor. I watch Edward's face. I can see him not so much listening to Aro as reading him.

"Your covers are all intact at this point. Sam was right to assume the worst, but…outsiders were not involved." Aro clears his throat. "As for your resources, they know only that you were called to an emergency debrief. Bella, Charlie is going to find a few backdated emails reminding him about an all-day service project you're doing with the Cullens."

I grumble to myself and nod. I've had to condition my poor dad to think he's forgetful about emails by peppering his account with read messages and sent replies he's never seen and can't recall.

"And your colleague, of course, deserves and is receiving state-of-the-art care. Lest any of you think otherwise, Sundial regards her mission as a success, albeit one that involved tremendous personal sacrifice. She flipped a digit on her C-4 calculations and overtreated the barrier. As far as Sundial is concerned, it was a simple mistake anyone could make—she did nothing wrong. Though we are all disappointed, of course, that her options for the future are now more…limited…I hope every one of you knows how sincere I am when I say she transitions out of the organization with honor."

_Overtreated the barrier._ She blew the hell out of an old wooden warehouse gate and caught a good portion of the shrapnel with various parts of her body.

Bree stares at the wall between us and the surgical suite as if she could look straight through it. "Wait—won't the doctors and nurses see her face?"

"I don't think that will be a problem," Aro says.

Sam freezes, turns on his heel, and stalks away. A few chairs teeter and squeak against the linoleum as he brushes by.

Aro grimaces. "I only mean that they are treating her like any other collateral Jane Doe. A high-value Jane Doe, at that—of course." He scurries off after Sam, who is pacing on the sidewalk outside now.

Bree looks at me, wide-eyed. I give her a tight-lipped smile. There's nothing I can say that will reassure her. Like most people who've just met Emily, Bree's main impression is of her beauty. Other attributes—her kindness, her fierce loyalty—are more important, but Bree doesn't know those sides of her yet.

Edward leans forward in his chair and rests his elbows on his knees. "Her face? Do you think it's bad?"

I shrug. I can't talk about this.

Leah, on the other hand, has no problem vocalizing anything. "Well, what do you think? We know for sure her earlobe was severed. You don't lose an ear without part of your face going along for the ride."

Jacob shakes his head, grim disapproval on his face. "Would you cool it? Jesus, Leah. This is your friend."

Edward tunes them both out. He's watching me now, and I can see the wheels turning in his head. His knee starts bouncing when he gets to the same point I'm at: The facts don't add up. C-4 for a wooden warehouse gate? A seven-year veteran letting a bad calculation override her gut check about how much to use?

This isn't the time or the place to get into it. I shake my head and go find Sam.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Aro looks at me with obvious relief when I approach Sam and him on a bench in the sun. He fumbles with his phone and makes an excuse to go back inside.

Sam groans when I take Aro's place beside him on the bench. "You know the drill, Swan. I have no comment. Not even to you."

"Don't worry. I'm not here to question you."

We watch a few ducks playing in the pond for a while. It's clearly an artificial pond—perfectly symmetrical, with a statue of a naked boy spitting water in the middle.

"You know, when they first put Edward on my second channel, it took a lot of getting used to. This would have been, I guess, three years ago?" Sam nods next to me. His eyes are closed. "It was almost too easy to reach him at any time of day or night…I was afraid of annoying him. I distrusted my own instincts, because I found myself wanting to tell him things I never cared to tell Aro on the first channel.

"I struggled for a long time. I was sure there had to be a trick. Some sort of bait and switch. Or another of Aro's tests. I guess I began to forget about that, though. I let myself trust Edward."

My eyes burn when I remember this. It pains me even now to acknowledge that I have Aro to thank for the most valuable thing in my life. This friendship.

"For him, too, it was awkward at first. He was worried he would interrupt time with my dad. He didn't want to interfere with my privacy."

Sam doesn't say a word but leans forward and rests his forearms on his thighs. His head drops down. If he was Edward, I would rub his back in between his shoulder blades, but I don't know if Sam would welcome that sort of thing.

"But now that we've both adjusted, I can't imagine not hearing his voice in my ear ten times a day. Fifty times a day. First thing in the morning. Last thing before I fall asleep. He can tell by the sound of my breathing if I'm cold. He can hear in my voice how I feel."

Sam's body shudders slightly. He lifts his hands to prop up his head. He speaks barely loud enough for me to hear—the way we've all been conditioned to, I guess. "I knew it was coming, but it wasn't supposed to be like this. Her disconnecting, I mean."

I nod. It's usually done quietly in Jenks' office, with the partner present. "It's just going to be an adjustment again. That's all. You'll still have the same relationship you always had, right? Only more like normal people. That might be good."

He twists so I can see his face in profile. He's frowning. "Five years, Bella. She's been connected to me like this for five years. I'd never try to make her stay, but I don't know what to do without her."

"What do you need? If she could hear your voice right now, what would she say to you?"

He looks at the unnaturally green grass and huffs. "She'd say I need to get over myself and forgive her."

I study his face, wondering what he isn't saying. Forgive her for what? He stares back, willing me to read his mind. When I hear the _tick-tick-tick_ of the automatic sprinkler system activating, followed by a welcome bath of white noise, I see a look of determination wash over his face. He leans in.

"Keep Edward close, Bella. Get him closer, even. Don't let him feel like he needs to keep anything from you. It's too dangerous."

I open my mouth to ask him to explain, but he shakes his head. The little spark of fury in his eyes dies down again, replaced by a dull glaze.

He walks away from me and bends to put his head in the sprinkler's line of fire, pink-tinted water dripping from his hands as he drags them through his hair. He rinses and rinses until the water runs clear.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Jenks orders Chinese food for us, and we eat huddled over takeout boxes around a bright white rectangular table. Everyone but Sam, that is. He's finally been allowed to go in and see Emily. Edward avoids conversation by studying the book Mrs. Cope gave him. He's on his second pass through it, this time with a pen in hand to underline whatever strikes him. I think he likes it because it reminds him that there are other ways of living.

Aro peers at the cover. "_A Moveable Feast._ Interesting choice of reading material, Edward."

He shrugs. "Discard bin."

"Hemingway fan?"

"Not particularly. Honestly, I was kinda hoping for a how-to manual on the catering business." He looks Aro squarely in the eye. His voice is flinty. "For my second career, you know?"

Edward shoves away from the table and throws his napkin down.

Aro doesn't even blink. "Passionate boy. He's deeply affected by this business, obviously. Leah, dear, have you got any extra sweet and sour sauce?"

+x+x+x+x+x+

When it becomes clear that our vigil will last overnight, Aro has headquarters send Carlisle orders to call Charlie to say we missed the last ferry crossing. I listen in silently until Charlie asks Carlisle to put me on. I apologize. I promise we're studying, and say that Esme is a strict mom. Carlisle sticks to the script. If he wonders why I'm mixed up with Edward's secret business, he never lets on.

It isn't necessary to keep us all here, since we're not under siege. But Aro seems to sense that we need to be together now. Either that or he senses that he can use it to his advantage. He leads us down a corridor to a sort of makeshift lounge in what used to be a patient waiting room.

He pulls a remote from somewhere and draws our attention to a large flat screen T.V. bolted to the wall. "I apologize if the timing is somewhat…awkward. But it occurs to me that several of you are nearing your zero year, and the program has decided it does not benefit you to have that experience shrouded in mystery. Even Bree should know what is in store for the rest of you. I'm available for any questions, of course."

The video he plays for us is all top-notch production values, all Technicolor scenes boasting of exotic dream destinations and a year of respite, all expenses paid. We see people summiting mountain peaks, piloting sailboats, reading in shaded hammocks on the beach. Alone, always alone. A voiceover hints at the opportunity to select a new identity and make a fresh start—_wherever and with whomever you choose_. This last part, this reference to carrying over some relationships, seems like an add-on, shoehorned in.

I glance at Edward to see if this changes his cranky demeanor. He doesn't seem to register the information though, focused as he is on the screen. He stares at the pixelated blobs where faces should be, searching for signs of humanity.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Aro indicates that this wing also houses sleeping rooms. He gathers us around as if to make bed assignments, but then appears to have a change of heart. He gestures for us to do as we wish and leaves us be, saying, "Mind the little one, obviously."

Sam isn't in any condition to take care of Bree. Edward begins to step forward, but Leah stops him. "Wait. Jake will go with Sam. Let Bree stay with me."

None of us can sleep, though. Edward finds an old Xbox console in the lounge, and we take turns playing Grand Theft Auto. I stretch out on the couch and let exhaustion take over. I come to at some point in the night and find a blanket draped over me. Edward is asleep on the floor, a spot of drool darkening the carpet under his cheek. I rouse him, and together, we stumble to an unoccupied room with a softer place to sleep and better blankets.

As I'm drifting off again, I hear his breath in my ear. "Don't ever get hurt. Promise me."

"Hey. Hey. You know I can't—"

"Just promise me."

"Of course. I promise, okay? Just go to sleep. You're delirious."

"The tunnel," he says, lighter than whispering. "Did they have you use it?"

I shake my head, shivering and pulling him closer.

"Me neither."

+x+x+x+x+x+

We go to see Emily in the morning. Her face—what I can see of it—is swollen with bruises and whichever meds do that to a person. That's not the part that gives me chills. She looks impossibly peaceful. It's not a haze; her eyes peeking from layers of gauze are clear. It looks like relief.

"Hey, B." She sandwiches my hand between hers. More gauze. Edward hangs back. "I'm okay, you guys. Don't look at me like that."

I guess I keep looking at her like…however.

"Okay, whatever." She laughs softly and pets my hand like I'm the one who needs comforting. "Everything's going to be fine. I'm getting my life back. I'll see you again. On my own terms."

She's practically giddy.

In the car on the way home, Edward flips open his bag and shows me a Mylar assignment pack, shaking his head. It just wouldn't be like Aro to let us catch a break; this is the job that would have gone to Bree. He closes the flap again just as quickly.

We drop him off first, and when I get home and power up my off-the-grid laptop five minutes later, I find a terse message from him. _She did it to herself. I don't know how, but that's no shrapnel accident. Not a single hair singed._

A second message appears while I'm reading the first._ I guess no Volturi career for her. It's genius, really._

I don't answer him by email, but over the SatCom. I pinch my earlobe. "Edward. I know. She's okay. It'll be okay." I listen to him breathing. The strangest impulse strikes me; I feel the words _I love you_ poised on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I say, "We'll be okay." It's the best I can do. Maybe it's the same.

+x+x+x+x+x+

He offers to drive me to Evergreen Manor the next morning. On the ride over, he asks if they might find a use for him if he sticks around for the day. Lauren snags me before I even take off my jacket.

"Hey, Bella. Mrs. Cope wants to go to the bank, but the van is in the shop." She steers me by my elbow down the main corridor, talking as we walk. Edward follows close behind us. "Can you take her? She likes you. She even asked for you."

"Well, I came here with this one. He's not on Evergreen's insurance." I look over my shoulder and watch his face, knowing what Lauren will suggest. He'll need to have his FauxPrint prosthetic fingertips on him in order to get cleared.

"They can add him." Lauren looks back and forth between the two of us. Edward nods his head subtly for my benefit. "You'll do it, though? Assuming he doesn't have a warrant out for his arrest?" She laughs to show me she's only kidding.

"Yeah. No trouble at all," Edward says. He flashes me a smile that's three parts Attentive Boyfriend, one part Wary Operative.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Mrs. Cope is bleary-eyed in the van. She clutches the paperwork Lauren sent with her, which I soon find out has to do with accessing her safe-deposit box.

"Right this way," the official says to us. He seems to know Mrs. Cope. "Are these two with you, Shelly?"

She nods. "From Evergreen."

He leads the three of us down a corridor. Mrs. Cope lists a bit to the right as she walks. Edward offers his elbow.

What used to be the vault has been repurposed to house the safe-deposit boxes, apparently. The room is like something out of an old gangster movie, with high ceilings and a heavy mahogany table surrounded on all sides by walls composed of sealed metal compartments. Together, Mrs. Cope and the bank official retrieve a solid-looking rectangular steel box. We follow them to yet another room, this one a nondescript beige square with a plain desk and two chairs.

Edward makes a circuit of the perimeter, furtively sweeping the room for bugs with his Signal Detector. He's on edge because our IDs and thumbprints weren't taken when we entered the vault, which is a pretty serious security lapse. Mrs. Cope looks at him askance. I shake my head as if to say: _Boys. _I take a seat when she pats the chair next to her.

"Every young lady should have pearls. Just humor me and let me see how they look on you." I blush and let her drape a strand around my neck. I can easily sneak the pearls back into her stash when she's not looking. She nods approvingly, slipping a similar strand around her own powdery neck. "You never know when the occasion will arise, hmm? Look at it in the light—here, just look." She hands me a small makeup compact from her purse and points to the dimmer switch on the wall.

As I move to the wall and brighten the lights, our banker backs out of the room, closing the doors with a heavy clink. I'm torn between checking my reflection in the compact mirror and interpreting the expression on Edward's face.

All at once, I find myself taking into account the variables inherent in this scenario. There are a lot of them. Too many, when you consider the things people keep in safe-deposit boxes.

I take a step toward Edward out of reflex, goose bumps cropping up on my arms. I can actually see the hairs on his neck standing at attention. We both realize at the same time that we've turned our backs on Mrs. Cope. Slowly, ever so slowly, we turn around. Edward's cold hand on my wrist mirrors the ice in my veins.

She's standing near the far wall, drawn up to her full height. Her shoulders are square and straight, her arms folded. She's holding an old-school Signal OverRyde remote in her hand. Her countenance has transformed completely from what it was a moment ago. Her eyes are piercing and steady. Her voice, when she speaks, rings with authority.

"Listen closely, you two. Sorry for the ruse, but this is just about the only bug-proof room in Seattle. The average customer spends eighteen minutes in here, and we're already at 2:18, so forgive me if I skip the niceties and cut to the chase. We won't get two chances at this, so I need you to listen carefully. Hear me out—ask questions later. First things first: Do you trust me?"

"But you—"

"Yes. The dementia con. Oldest trick in the book. Effective, but goddamn, it takes a toll on the body." She cracks her neck and shakes the tension out of her shoulders. "No matter. I asked if you trust me. If the answer's no, I have you escorted out and I turn your SatComs back on." She waves the remote when she says this. "No harm, no foul. If the answer's yes…well. Can we carry on?"

She glances at Edward's bag. That's twice now. The sealed Mylar assignment pack peeks out from under the flap.

I look at him, finding the answer I need, then at her.

"Mrs. Cope—or whoever you are—yes, we trust you."

+x+x+x+x+x+


	8. Life in Color

**Chapter 8: Life in Color**

_I look at him, finding the answer I need, then at her._

"_Mrs. Cope—or whoever you are—yes, we trust you."_

There really isn't a second option in this situation, and we both know it. If this woman means to harm us, it's as good as done. We're cut off from the world in here, and I've already counted six vulnerabilities a moderately clever agent could exploit. If she has other intentions, well…we might as well hear them.

Edward looks like he might throw up.

She nods her head and gives us a wry smile. "What else are you going to say, right?

"Yes, Mrs. Cope is my name. Shelly, if you prefer." She pushes the safe deposit box toward us and backs away. "I'm unarmed, as you can see. This will be easier if you can stop kicking yourselves."

Edward flips through the contents of the box: papers and trinkets. "What's this about? You said yourself time is limited." He's agitated.

"You must know there are ex-agents alive in the world? Ex-Sundial, I mean?"

His eyes narrow. How could she have known that this—life after Sundial—is his one and only obsession? He's been waiting years for someone to mention "ex" and "alive" in the same sentence. If she were out to manipulate us, this would be the way to do it. I look away from Edward. I want him to believe her. I can be skeptical enough for both of us.

"Ex-Sundial. Yes. Only since 2001, supposedly," Edward says.

She shakes her head. "No. That was just when Aro made his big power grab. We've been around, in fact, since World War II. And I do mean _we_ in the usual sense. I was one of you."

She fishes a photograph out of her box and hands it across the table to Edward, who glances at it and hands it to me. She's wearing a plain white button-down dress and ankle socks in the grainy picture. She squints into the sun.

"I'll spare you the history lesson, except to say that Sundial wasn't always what it is now. We used to be an agency of last resort, deployed only rarely. That began to change subtly in the '60s, and more dramatically after 9/11, of course. But then these past few years, with the feds slashing budgets and cutting corners, Aro…Aro has grown more powerful and less careful, which is the worst possible combination for someone with his ego.

Edward and I exchange glances. This all corresponds to what we've both secretly suspected, though there's never been any point in our acknowledging it, and we certainly would have never spoken about it out loud.

"We have new intelligence indicating he's gone rogue. This was our only window for enlisting you, for reasons you'll understand very soon. It's bad enough already, the things he's involving you in, but this new business we caught wind of…well, it needs to end."

I nod my head. My heart is pounding in my chest. I want so badly to hear her say she's here to take us away from all of this—to cripple Aro's operation by removing two of his more experienced agents. I have to stop myself from scanning the room for an escape route; I already know none exists. "And if we decide to agree with you?"

"Well. My associates and I—yes, there are several of us—we know what a bind he has you in. But we also know the only way to stop him is from the inside. That's all there is to it." She pulls out a chair and sits down, which subtly levels out the power dynamic between the three of us. "We need your help."

Edward stares, his mouth hanging open. He's never looked more like a seventeen-year-old boy in my eyes. "You need _our_ help?"

"Sorry, kid. I wish I could say I was here to bust you out, but until Aro is removed from power, my hands are tied." She smooths her hair and then flattens a wrinkle at her knee before looking Edward square in the face. "There's only one way for you to part ways with him on your terms: Sundial needs to be destroyed."

Edward laughs bitterly and drags his hands over his face. "It's that simple, is it? Don't you think I've dreamed about it every single day for the past, I don't know, three or four years? If there was any way, I'd have found it, believe me." He leans over the table and rests his weight on his knuckles. His eyes are pinched at the corners, and it makes him look half-deranged. "It is _impossible_. He will find us out, and he will kill us. We'll be lucky if he kills us quickly."

I hear myself gasp. He's frightened. Really scared. "Edward, just…hey, look at me. Hear her out."

"Hear her out? A friend of ours is in the hospital right now, having successfully mutilated herself beyond recognition, because she thought her only way out was to make herself less valuable as an asset. I call that a pretty fucking hopeless situation." He whips around and faces Shelly. "So for you to come in here with your fake dementia and your old-lady wig like you think you're some genius—"

I put a hand on his trembling arm. His skin is hot. "What is the matter with you? You're being super rude." I've seen him lose his cool with Aro, but it isn't like him to lash out this way. I lower my voice to a hiss. "It's not some costume. She always wears a wig, like a lot of women at Evergreen."

He doesn't apologize, but he does manage to look contrite.

Shelly is unshaken. "Believe me, we understand how difficult this is. But this isn't just about you. More people than you can imagine are in danger now. You're going to need serious help, absolutely. And we are gravely serious. You'll find out very soon how serious."

I decide to tackle a less volatile subject. "Wait. You said there's a number of you. How have your communications gone undetected?"

"Everything is analog, to begin with. We use a lot of paper and antiquated devices, control the chain of possession. We're good at scrambling retransmissions." She peers at us. "And with Aro so focused on his high-tech marvels, well…there are ways to hide very major things in plain sight. Tunnels, for example."

At that, Edward looks up, a question frozen on his lips.

Shelly nods. "Sundial has no knowledge of those escape routes of yours—neither of them. Your house, Edward…old Rufus Crowley is a friend of a friend. He helps us match particular buyers with old Volturi safe houses from time to time. In fact, I had half a notion that you had gone digging and tracked me down through him."

Edward shakes his head.

"Yours was a bit trickier, Bella…sorry about the mice, by the way."

"The decoder was you, though? On purpose?" I ask.

"And the book. Yes. It was a bit of a test, I'm afraid."

"You watched to see if we'd turn it all in."

"We were planning a message drop in your basement room next, Bella, but…circumstances have changed. Some new information has come to light, and the timeline was accelerated."

Edward releases a low hiss. I glance at him and see his hands braced behind his neck. "That Hemingway book. I had it with me when we evacuated."

"But there's nothing remarkable about it. Would it have meant something to Aro?"

"Yes, dear. He doesn't suspect you, but he knows that book and how it's used. He'll test your loyalty. Soon. You need to be prepared."

This is a lot to absorb. I rest my head in my hands, feeling dizzy.

_Everything changes now_, I think to myself. I don't miss a word of what Mrs. Cope says to us during the remaining minutes we spend in that shielded clamshell of a room, but I'm also hyper-aware of this refrain repeating itself endlessly in my brain. Even before I hear her outline the risks and the gravity of what she's proposing, I know I'll say yes. Because _everything changes. This changes everything._

I'm thinking it, but it's thinking me, too. I don't have a choice in the matter. This thing—this feeling—comes surging through me, unleashed by these new revelations. This shift in circumstances. More than circumstances—everything, it seems, has shifted.

Being in this moment feels like that day Edward and I watched a middle school kid demonstrate a prism at a Volta League expo. This young girl—she was younger than Bree is now—was so delighted with the colors.

"It's one thing going in—a beam of light. It's something else coming out," she'd said.

I had corrected her. "It's not 'something else.' It just has different qualities. It's still light…but light slowed down. And bent." Of course I'd been a stickler for the official story. But all the while I was thinking: _It's also a rainbow_. And that's different.

I mentally file away Mrs. Cope's instructions—about the escape hatches, about when and where to look for message drops, about the decoding protocols we should expect.

I shake my head, trying to clear away the brightness and the colors crowding my thinking. I can smell the musty paper in the safe deposit box and see the green of Mrs. Cope's polyester pant suit reflected in the chrome surfaces of the desk supplies.

I sit down.

I lift my eyes to look at Edward's face, and a strange thing happens. Out of nowhere, I see what he might look like when he's fully grown. It has nothing to do with his bone structure or that mop of hair; it's his eyes that look right through me. I see the man he wants to be. I mean I actually let myself see it this time, or he lets it show, and it shocks me. It shocks me how much it matters to me. His eyes hold so much.

I see a dozen versions of him I've never consciously imagined before. In my mind's eye, I see him laughing, carefree; I see him letting his gaze wander down the front of my blouse, his brow furrowing, jaw going slack; I see him solemn and passionate and intent on his work. Work he chooses. He's free. And so am I.

Now he's smiling at me, eyebrows raised. I realize Mrs. Cope is asking us if we're on board. I'm so unaccustomed to being given a choice; it's disorienting, really. It almost makes me laugh.

Edward stares at me, serious as can be, asking, "Partners?"

"Yes," I say, looking at Edward.

"Yes," he whispers. And it's done.

_Everything changes._

She tosses us the remote that blocks our SatComs, cautioning us to use it sparingly, and hands over the first of our coded messages. "Don't open it now. You'll know when it's time," she says. "And you will—listen to me. You will succeed."

An intercom announces that the Evergreen van, just released from its tune-up at the garage, is here for Mrs. Cope. As she sinks back into her disguise of stooped posture and distraction, I see her eyes fill with tears. She blinks them away just as quickly. We walk her out, bundle her into the van, and say goodbye.

+x+x+x+x+x+

Back in the car, everything seems brighter and so airy. It rained while we were in the bank, and everything sparkles with little wet drops, and the sun is at that spot in the sky where it shines through everything at a slant, golden. A toddler being pushed in a stroller kicks his fat little leg out to brush the dewy long grass. He giggles, and it matches how I feel. We get as far as Volunteer Park before Edward pulls over and parks on a side street. He releases his seatbelt.

I reach for the SatCom OverRyde device, but he stops me. He leans in close and speaks in his lower-than-breath voice. "No. Save it."

I begin to rear back so I can see his face, but he's holding me so fast and tight. I feel his lips on my skin. It's different. Insistent and brazen. The way he clutches me to him—it's the way you hold a thing you don't expect to let go of. He's never held me this way before.

I feel a sort of frenzy building, and it's coming from me. I kiss him back. I do. I taste him. I breathe him in. I match him pull for pull and grasp for grasp. I climb across the console and settle myself in his lap, sweaty and noisy.

"Bella. Oh, God," he says, panting, breathless. "I knew it. I knew it."

I should be embarrassed by the noises I'm making, but I can't bring myself to care. I just keep searching for some way—any way—to let everything I'm feeling come out. It's a lot.

He thumbs wetness away from the corners of my eyes. "I know," he says. "It's okay." I can hear giddiness in his voice, and instead of feeling guilty, I feel my heart puff up. I glow.

Eventually, I tire him out, or he tires me out. He pushes damp, sweaty strands of hair out of my face. "You and me…we're going to…," he says. "We're going to be, um…"

"Shh." I giggle into his shoulder. "I know." A pedestrian strolls past the car, pointedly not gawking at us. My cell phone buzzes with a text that I know is from Charlie, wondering why I'm late for dinner. Edward grins and trails his fingers along my limbs as I retreat back into the passenger seat.

Edward pulls back out onto Broadway and checks his watch. "I guess we can manage whatever this is, right?" He reaches into his bag and tosses me the Mylar pack he's been toting around. "I mean, considering."

I work my fingers under the seal and pester Edward to keep his eyes on the road. "Safety first."

"You're still wearing her pearls. They look good on you."

"Oh!" I lift my hand to feel the strand, foreign against my skin. "I forgot. She'll be missing these." I remember her telling me just an hour ago how _a girl should always have a strand of pearls_—how different that person seems now, how ridiculous that statement sounds. If I'm still wearing mine, she's probably still wearing hers.

"Go on. Let's get this done with." Edward stops at a red light.

I absently press the cool necklace between my lips while I drag the paperwork out of our assignment pack. It's a hit. We're supposed to use chemicals to induce a heart attack. If the person is in a hospital setting already, we can use an existing IV port. Then the only concern is suppressing the code red and obstructing security cameras.

I look back at Edward. A stranger's life will end, and I hate it, but it doesn't seem so wretchedly bad now because there is an end in sight. There's a plan in place. I know we'll succeed. We have to. Edward grins and glances at the stack of papers, eager to see the rest of the details.

I spit the pearls out, frowning. I can feel a chalky residue on my lips. "These are made of paste. Shelly might not need to keep them locked up in a bank vault."

I flip to the second page of our brief, and the bitter taste in my mouth registers.

It's not paste these are made of. It's poison. A suicide device. One or two pearls would be enough.

The face of our target stares up at me from the brief. This isn't a stranger we've been commanded to kill. It's Mrs. Cope.

I clutch the pearls with one hand and the door handle with the other as Edward spins us into a tight U-turn, away from Charlie now and toward Evergreen, which is close enough for us to hear a siren wailing, and still too far away.

+x+x+x+x+x+

**AN: **So, yeah. This took an extremely long time to write, so sorry about that! If you're still hanging in there, thanks for reading! Grammar and clarity management brought to you courtesy of** happymelt, midsouthmama, **and** faireyfan. ** I also tend to mine their favorites lists whenever I need something to read. Until next time!


	9. Absolute Values

**AN: **Many thanks for your patience, those of you who are reading this as a WIP! I'm so grateful for beta and prereaders happymelt, faireyfan, and midsouthmama, who cheerfully edit and correct me (and share recipes and gardening tips and cocktail cautionary tales). Thanks for reading.**  
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**My Sweet Variable**

**Chapter 9: Absolute Values  
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_I clutch the pearls with one hand and the door handle with the other as Edward spins us into a tight U-turn, away from Charlie now and toward Evergreen, which is close enough for us to hear a siren wailing, and still too far away._

In one swift motion, Edward grasps and activates the plastic SatCom OverRyde device, which is sliding across the dashboard of the car. If there was ever a time to knock out all signal transmissions, this is it.

Words come rushing out of his mouth. He steals glances at the brief on the seat between us as if to reconfirm what he's already seen. "What is it? What do you taste? Tell me." He grimaces and presses the accelerator.

"Strychnine. I think." I fumble for the BioSeal canister from his bag and spit into it inelegantly.

"You think, or you know? Damn it. How much did you ingest?" His attention ping-pongs back and forth between the road and me. His alarm is obvious in the sharp pitch of his voice. "Tell me. Now."

"Nothing. A tiny amount on the tip of my tongue." I check the readout. "I'm right—it's strychnine. But I'm fine. Edward, hurry."

"You're shaking." He takes a hand off the wheel, wipes his sweaty palm on his jeans, and thumbs my eyelid to check my pupils. "Nausea?"

"No, nothing." I brush his hand away. I'd need to chomp a whole pearl or two for this poison to have an effect. "I'm shaking because I'm scared . . . for her."

"I know. Jesus Christ. It's medieval." Edward chews a thumbnail.

There's a reason we don't use strychnine anymore, not even on our enemies. It causes muscle spasms that eventually suffocate a person. It's an extremely painful way to die. This wearable version—a StrychStrand—is something I always assumed was pure legend.

We're a few car lengths behind the ambulance that my gut tells me is carrying Mrs. Cope. "She'll be symptomatic. Convulsing. If they can get some charcoal in her . . . but they'll probably read this as a neurological seizure. Shit." He groans and presses his creased forehead with his thumb and forefinger. "Why did I have to be so awful to her?"

"Hey. We both need to focus right now, okay?" He nods grimly and waits for me to continue. "I've seen oxy and donepezil on her chart. She never actually needed the meds, but she has access to them. What are the interactions?"

"Hmm. I doubt she'd stack them." The car scrapes across a speed bump as we enter the hospital parking lot a bit too fast. He slows and rolls past the ambulance bay. I hear him curse under his breath as we both catch a glimpse of Mrs. Cope's green pant suit in between bustling paramedics.

I swallow back the lump that rises in my throat. It would be nice to be wrong about these things once in a while. But I can't think about that right now. "Why not just hoard a bunch of oxy? Much less painful."

He shakes his head. "No. That looks premeditated. If she succeeds—I've never seen anything like it. She cooked her own death. Cooked it so it looks like natural death to the hospital and like a natural-death hit in Aro's eyes."

"Edward."

"But there's something strange. I can't put my finger on it. I mean, this complicates things by involving authorities, don't you think? The paramedics, the coroner. A dive off a cliff would have—"

"Edward!"

He clamps his mouth shut and shoots me a sideways look that tells me he's listening.

"Can we save the postmortem for later? I'm still hoping we won't need one."

He yanks up the parking brake and then puts a hand on my arm to stop me from flying out of the car. "I'm sorry—I know. But what's our plan? She said our loyalty to Aro would be tested. If her being targeted is what she meant . . . she's trusting us to make it look right."

I sigh, suppressing the urge to screech in frustration. I hate not knowing what will happen—which course to take. "One step at a time, okay? We raced here for a reason. If I can save her life, I will. Yes?"

He nods.

"I'll go in alone. If I can't stop this, I'll at least ask her a few questions. You'll hear me on the SatCom if there's anything to report to Aro." I drop Shelly's first message in his lap—the one she gave us at the bank. She did tell us we'd know when it was time. "I'm guessing this is important. How fast can you decode it?"

He breaks the seal and scans the paper. "Twenty minutes? It's layer cake."

I groan. Layer cake means it combines optical, language, and key code encryption.

He rummages in his bag. "Here—take this. It's lorazepam." He slips a syringe into my hand. "If she's alive, she'll need an airway. Half this dose sedates her enough to get a vent in. But if it's too late, and she's suffering . . . the full dose will . . . you know." He squeezes my fingers, giving me a look that says—I guess—_Sorry you might need to kill your friend_.

He holds my hand and my gaze for another moment. I know what he's thinking—that we need to give some sort of update to headquarters to keep things from looking suspicious later. I nod. With his free hand he switches off the OverRyde and then pinches his earlobe to connect to Aro.

"A, this is Big Bird. We may have a window of opportunity on target Alpha." He cringes at Aro's eager squawking. "We need good ears on scanners for the next hour—can you do that? Personally?"

Aro being focused on scanners means he won't be monitoring us. At least there's that. As I turn to go, Edward squeezes my hand one more time.

"I think you're forgetting something." He looks at me, eyebrows raised.

"Oh." I'm struck with the sensation that I'm on stage, and I've forgotten my lines. What am I supposed to do? I feel confused, flustered, certain that I'll never understand the etiquette of relationships, but I lean toward him anyway and peck him on the mouth. His lips are dry. "Bye."

When I straighten up, he's doing a poor job of hiding a pained expression on his face. He's smiling, but it's crooked, and his eyes are pink and watery.

"Um. Hmm. Actually, I meant . . . " I feel a tug and look down to see his fingers wrapped around the necklace. _Oh_. Of course he meant this—this strand of could-be-evidence around my neck. His voice is gentle. "Leave this here."

I dip my head so he can take it from me but don't look at him again as I scramble out of the car and make my way across the lot.

+x+x+x+

Navigating hospitals is one of my strengths. It's harder than you would think. For every square meter of space visible to the average patient or visitor, you'd find three times that amount devoted to logistics: loading docks, industrial kitchens and laundries, diagnostic laboratories. Hallways don't lead where you think they would lead.

I've studied this hospital from the outside. You can make a lot of inferences from things like types and sizes of windows, and so I have a general blueprint in my head, but the majority of the interior is a puzzle to me. Solving it will occupy any spare mental capacity that might otherwise wander toward sentimental thoughts, and for that, I'm grateful.

Then there are the security measures. Cameras, doors that require an ID swipe to access, superhuman nurses who seem to intuit every little change in the air. I need luck to be in my corner today, because I don't just need to get to Mrs. Cope—who is in the E.R.—I need to find the electronic records center, and I may need to find a way to divert the medical staff away from the ward.

+x+x+x+

Half an hour later, I'm slumped on a drab couch in a third-floor lounge intended for family members. I'm alone. Inside the reaches of my hoodie pockets, I toy with the syringe—empty now—and a stolen security badge I found in the front pocket of Mrs. Cope's jacket. A final deception on her part, a final slight of hand, a final gift that I'm sure has staggering value. A fan whirs somewhere within the HVAC ducts.

Edward will find me soon, and we'll have work to do. For now, I want nothing more than to lean my head back and swirl into a black hole of escape, but I don't know when I'll have a moment to myself again, and I can make the rest of this week easier on myself if I just organize my thoughts.

My phone buzzes with a new text. Alice.

_We on for Fremont after school? Rose is in._

Ugh. I was excited about prom dress shopping, but the prospect sounds unreal now. I shake my head and reply with a _Yes_. I open up Charlie's text from earlier—from when I was making out with Edward on a shady street near the park. A whole hour ago. A whole lifetime ago.

I sigh. It's not what I'm expecting, but it occurs to me it's convenient to have this message on record. It can serve to explain why I'm here.

_Everything okay at Evergreen? Dispatch sent an ambulance to meet their van. _

I shoot him a reply. _It's my friend Mrs. Cope. She had some sort of seizure. At the hospital now._

Alice again: _Cool._ _Don't forget your swim gear for PE tmrw._

Charlie again: _Aw, hon._ _Hope she's okay._ _Someone named Ben called the house. Says_ _he just got his license and volunteered to drive to the statewide meet._

Jesus. Like we need that kind of stress. I reply._ Thanks. I have a bus arranged. I'll talk to him tomorrow._

While I'm thinking of it, I send a confirmation email to the transportation company and text the rest of the team to remind them about parental permission slips.

Charlie again: _When do visiting hours end? Want me to pick you up?_

The idea is appealing, actually, but I may need more car time with Edward to discuss things further._ Thanks, but E is here. He can drive me. _

What else is left? A sort of to-do list forms in my mind. I need privacy to debrief with Edward. I need to destroy these clothes and figure out why I'm supposed to have this security badge. I need a way to seek out Shelly's colleagues without drawing attention to them or us. I need to seriously consider blowing this whole thing off and just disappearing for real—talk Edward into faking our own deaths or something. And, finally, regardless of whether we fight or flee, I need to throw Aro off our track.

This last item worries me the least. In fact, I look forward to it quite a bit. Common sense would say throwing him off our track would entail playing nice and falling in line with his world view. But teenagers aren't bound by common sense. Sloppy emotion—outrage and railing against unfairness—is more true to form. It's also unpleasant, which makes it more likely Aro will leave us alone.

+x+x+x+

I must lose myself for a while daydreaming about making Aro squirm, because when the hallway door opens, and Edward pokes his head in, I realize I'm sitting here in near darkness. Even backlit and silhouetted in the doorframe, his hair has a shape I'd know anywhere.

"There you are." As he comes closer, I can see his features scrunch together in concern. "I thought you would have reported in by now."

He sits on the coffee table facing me, switches on a table lamp, and searches me for signs of trouble—first with his eyes and then with his hands. He cocks an eyebrow when he finds the security badge and frowns when I open my clenched fist to show him the empty syringe. When he's satisfied that I'm more or less intact, he pushes a pen and paper toward me so I can tell him silently what happened.

He glances pointedly at the syringe.

_Dumped it down a drain, _I scrawl. _She was dead before I found her._

His gaze flits around my face—evaluating, reading, trying to decide whether to believe it happened that way. Ultimately, he just leans closer to me and wraps me in his arms. I can feel him sigh, and I can feel my own body stiffen. I don't know what to do. I don't feel like crying. He shifts his body from the table to sit beside me on the sofa.

He only loosens his hold when Aro's audio signal crackles in our ears.

"Were you going to alert me of your progress at any point, dear ones? I dislike resorting to a morgue phone tap to learn what my assets are up to and whether cleanup is necessary. But . . . well done. We have a cerebral hemorrhage C.O.D. Unsuspicious."

I already know this because I'm the one who put it in her electronic record.

Edward scrawls a question to me on the scrap of paper. _Showtime._ _Are we compliant or defiant?_

I smile weakly and point to the latter.

He nods and answers Aro. "Leave us alone, A. We've done what you asked. Don't expect us to celebrate this one."

"But you've read the brief. Surely—"

"We've read all about how you think a former agent with dementia is an unacceptable security risk. Doesn't mean it had to go down like this. She was a batty old woman, and she was dying anyways. Cancer." My eyes snap to meet Edward's as he pushes Shelly's decoded message toward me, nodding. I pick it up but don't read it.

"Is that what she told you?" For a moment, the only sound is Aro breathing. "This was why I assigned Bree in the first place. She's not attached. Never met the woman."

Edward snorts. "And she wouldn't dream of questioning you."

Here we go. This is a tricky dance. Aro takes the bait.

"I should like to think _you_ wouldn't dream of questioning me. You never have before now. What's changed?"

"The assessed threat level, for one thing. She was so yellow she was practically green. Sundial is chartered for onyx and onyx-red targets exclusively. So why don't you tell me what's changed?" He's on his feet and pacing now.

Aro snorts. "I suppose I could, but you don't have the security clearance. The truth would disgust you."

"It usually does."

I hear Aro's bored sigh across the SatCom. "Can we be done with this? Am I filing this as a clean job, or is there anything you need to tell me?"

"It's clean. If you can call coerced suicide clean." He screws up his face, listening to himself lie. He flops back down on the couch beside me. "Do I need to remind you of the short list of shitty situations that might lead an agent to do that? She died thinking she'd blown her cover. Humiliated. Not your finest moment, setting it up that way."

"I didn't choose the method, my boy."

"Didn't you?" I jump in. "What else were we supposed to think when we found her safe deposit box chock full of StrychStrands? Because she didn't seem to recall putting them there. You trained us to follow your breadcrumbs, remember?" I hold up my crossed fingers because this rationale is thin, and we need him to believe it. The entire ruse only works if it seems like we were following orders.

Aro isn't fixated on the method, though. "Her box? What else was in there?"

Edward holds my gaze, because this level of interest from Aro is unusual.

"Nothing," he says. "Unremarkable snapshots. Less than a grand in foreign currency."

"Humph. Let's not discuss this over the airwaves. We'll debrief later. Does Phoenix need psych services? She sounds . . . emotional."

"Fuck psych services. 'Emotional' is appropriate."

"Fine. Take ten days R and R."

"When finals are over, we will."

Aro's signal goes silent. I relax back into the crook of Edward's arm—but only for a moment.

"Charlie's worried about me."

"Hmm." Edward hums into my hair. "Well, good. He loves you. You deserve that."

I don't have an answer for that, so I shrug.

"Guess we should get you home, huh?"

"Soon. I'm tired." I lift the security badge so he can see it. "Tell me if we need to deal with this first."

He nods against the back of my head. "Yep."

With one final, heavy sigh, he launches himself to his feet and reaches a hand down to help me up. He gives me a weary look that mirrors how I feel. I grab the empty syringe and the scrap paper we've been using so I can dispose of it properly. While we travel the halls, I read Shelly's decoded note. He's already memorized the directions it gives, so I follow close on his heels.

By the time we arrive at our destination, I'm afraid to look at his face again. I don't want to see the dread I know will be there—or the desperation that might make me imagine turning back and forgetting we ever crossed paths with Shelly Cope. But that's not an option. Not when the message baked into your layer cake includes words like _quarantine_ and _limited immunity_ and _pandemic_ and _mass extermination_.

What we're about to see will change everything. I wave my stolen badge in front of the confinement unit airlock and wait for the flashing indicator to turn from red to green.

+x+x+x+


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: **Gosh, thanks for hanging in there so long while I was gallivanting around all summer, taking a mini break from writing, working long days and weeks, etc. I won't delay you much longer except to say, A) many many thanks to happymelt for beta reading and midsouthmama and faireyfan for prereading even during their own busy days and weeks . . . and, B) see another note at the end! :) **  
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**Chapter 10: Surface Tension**

The heavy door separating us from the quarantine unit disarms with a dull thud. It's sort of anticlimactic. The low hum of the airlock venting system falls silent, as expected. I swear I can hear Edward grinding his teeth next to me. I reach a hand out to push the door, but he grasps my wrist to stop me.

I glance up to see him shaking his head, appalled at me. I'm not wearing FauxPrints, and even if I were, the cardinal rule when dealing with biohazards—for agents or any random person with common sense—is _Don't touch anything_.

Edward, still clutching my wrist, waves my hand in front of a motion sensor. The door swings open in front of us automatically.

Inside the airlock, the advisory signage matches what Mrs. Cope has warned of: a dangerous contagion, infectious through fluid exchange but not airborne. Nevertheless, Edward digs a BioSensor from his bag and clips it to my sweatshirt. He hands me a pair of disposable gloves and snaps some onto his own hands. I'm about to wave my arm to activate the second automatic door when he tugs me back again. His fingers twist anxiously around my wrist. Latex on latex.

"Wait." He grimaces. "If something happens, I . . . I want you to know—"

I clap my gloved palm over his mouth. "Oh, uh-uh. Don't you dare." Now it's my turn to be appalled. We're not superstitious about much, but this sort of talk is taboo in a hot zone.

I can see how nervous he is, though. This afternoon, we could have claimed we were simply humoring a rogue ex-agent in order to keep tabs on her. But in this moment—and from now on—we are actively striking out on our own. We're the rogue agents now. Not only that, we supposedly have a biohazard to deal with.

I pull him by his hoodie until he's an inch away from me, close enough that I can whisper under my breath. I've already activated the SatCom OverRyde, but there's always the possibility of hard-wired monitoring in an institutional setting like this. "Hey. Listen to me. If this goes south and we need a rescue, we say we were just following a clue our target let slip." I parrot back to him the line Aro fed us in our assignment brief. "She wasn't all there, and it made her dangerous. Blabbing left and right to everybody and their brother. We need to make sure she didn't leave any sort of trail that would expose our organization, all right?"

I don't so much see as feel him nod his head. A moment later, we're in.

The ward is small and dimly lit. Only one patient room is occupied, a ribbon of light peeking out from the bottom of the door's edge.

Before we can investigate, Edward marches off in search of any personnel who might need to be diverted. I pull my Vampire Tap device out, thinking I'll download the electronic medical record—until I notice there is no electronic medical record. A paper chart is all there is. I pull it from the rack on the wall and flip through it.

A John Doe, estimated to be in his mid-fifties. Unconscious on arrival.

Edward will pick up more from the file than I will, but for the time being I can see doctors have noted a very unusual constellation of symptoms, which was enough to trigger the quarantine and special treatment. No volatile contagions. And nothing in here indicates the hospital is aware of the so-called epidemic threat Shelly wrote of.

I hear Edward's sneakers as he approaches. He's making quite a bit more noise that he was a moment ago. "You scanned for ears and eyes, I take it?"

"Tons of both, but all wired to a closed circuit, in strict accordance with HIPPA standards." He holds up a square metal thing—a security dongle. "And all useless without this."

I begin to breathe easier. At least we can talk freely. Where private secure networks like this one are in place, Aro simply taps them. He doesn't add separate Sundial surveillance, saying it would be redundant. He has great faith in his own infallibility.

"Did you feed in some decoy footage?"

"Of course. Looped in yesterday's backup."

This better go smoothly, I think. If it comes to light that we tampered with a feed Aro is tapping, we'll have some explaining to do.

"What's the personnel situation?"

"One nurse. She's enjoying a short nap, courtesy of yours truly."

"Everyone says you have the golden touch."

"You were asking around, were you?"

"Basic recon, Big. Had to be sure my new partner wasn't a liability."

"Well, good. I've worked hard for that reputation. Sam's the lover, Jake's the fighter. I make people nod off instantly."

"No doubt." I'm surprised by how easy it is to fall back into our standard banter. It's comfortable. I can feel my blood pressure begin to relax. I glance at Edward with a quirked brow. "Is Sam really the lover?"

He takes the patient chart from my hands and begins to flip through it. "No. I'm the lover, obviously. But don't tell the others. It's my secret weapon."

"Naturally."

"Speaking of recon . . . what do you see?"

I shrug. "An overly cautious hospital."

He scans it and nods. A flicker of confusion passes over his face, though. "It certainly isn't the bubonic plague. Why would she risk everything to lead us to a dead end?"

He turns his attention back to the file, and I see him pause and rescan a page, eyes narrowed. "Interesting. This might be something." He pulls the page from the record, waves it under a nearby GermZapz light for good measure, and folds it into a small square before replacing the chart in its plastic rack.

He says, "Excuse me," and then tugs at the collar of my shirt so he can reach in and slip the page into my bra, chuckling when my face flames.

He looks me over to confirm the evidence is concealed, and then his own face tinges pink.

I call him an idiot, but I'm laughing. I'm excited that he might have found something important enough to keep secret.

"Let's do this."

Edward pushes the door open with his shoulder, and we approach the patient bed where a lumpy form lies covered in sheets, his face obscured by an oxygen mask, tubes crisscrossing his body. Edward reads the monitors and inspects the various IV meds. We both stare at his chest rising and falling.

"Um . . .wait a second." Edward pulls the mask away from the man's face and thumbs his eyelid to reveal a face that looks eerily familiar. Edward turns to me, disbelieving. "Are you seeing this?"

"Holy shit. Our mark from Gas Works Park. The bee sting."

"Yeah. Only it can't be. We killed him. I tested the doses myself. I watched him go down."

"It doesn't make sense. Maybe it's his twin?"

Edward shakes his head. He nudges the edge of the man's gown, revealing a neck tattoo. I know he's mentally revisiting the assignment brief. "This is him."

Well, damn. We've really stepped in something now. If Aro knows about this, which I'm sure is the case, it's a serious protocol breach. Agents are supposed to be fully debriefed if a job gets botched. Is that what this is—a failed hit? Is he being kept alive as some sort of witness who would identify me from that day? What does this comatose man have to do with Mrs. Cope's suicide and her claims about an epidemic? And how much of this do Edward and I need to sort out before our school day begins in another ten hours?

I look at him. "Not a dead end after all. No pun intended."

He clenches his jaw. This is getting more and more complicated—and more than likely, Aro's directly involved.

"I'll go swap the feed back in and wake up the nurse."

"Wait—can we piggyback on Aro's tap or something? Get our own eyes and ears in here?"

He shakes his head. "Too risky. But that gives me an idea." For the first time since yesterday at the bank, I see a glimmer of excitement pass through his eyes. That's all it takes for my own exhaustion to give way to a tiny seed of hope.

+x+x+x+x+x+

In English class the next morning, I can't stop yawning. After giving Aro a perfunctory debrief, Edward and I stayed up most of the night, stealthily chatting on our secret laptops, exploring this scenario and that, agreeing on an official story to stick to. And then, at some point, the topic turned to possible options for post-prom outings, then dream vacations, then movie snacks that are acceptable (popcorn, hot pretzels, Junior Mints) and unacceptable (Jujubes, hot dogs, anything with a non-popcorn aroma).

I'm mid-yawn when Alice catches my eye from across the room and shakes her head at me, smirking. When it's time to change classes, she shows me a picture Rose texted her of Edward in Trig class with his mouth agape, dark circles under his eyes. It makes me grin a little. I just blink my eyes at her, all innocence, and ask her how Jasper's doing. This never fails when I need to change the subject.

"Oh! Wait. Look." She scrolls through more images on her phone, giggling. "Oops, I can't show you that. Maybe this one."

The shot she shows me is a portrait of her drawn in ink on a diner napkin. It's actually very sweet. "Hmm." I need to compose myself—this has made me teary. I really am overtired. "Did he draw this from memory?"

"Well, I may have texted him a photo or two . . . dozen. He comes home this weekend for three weeks."

"Do you ever imagine being with him forever?" The words are out of my mouth before I even know I'm thinking them.

"Whaaat?" She shrugs. "We're having fun." She squints her charcoal cat-eyes at me. "Don't tell me Edward is one of _those_—a forever-promiser? Because, I mean, really. It's the 21st century."

"No. It's not like that. I guess I've just been thinking . . . I don't know what. Like—forever is not that long."

She slows to a stop and swings me around to face her. "Aw. Is this about your buddy from the nursing home? Because that was a shock, and you two were close." She pulls me into a hug, and over her shoulder I can see Edward approaching, looking at me with a raised eyebrow. "You know, you could probably swing a couple of days off school. Take some time. What would you really miss? You already know how to swim."

"Yeah, but _he _doesn't."

"Ah. I see." She lets go and turns to see Edward hovering near the locker rooms, an uncertain expression on his face.

"Don't let me interrupt," he says.

"She was just telling me how nice it is to be needed. And I was just about to tell _her _that her dreamy boyfriend isn't the only one who needs her. And appreciates her."

"Very true, Alice," he says, looking at me the whole time.

+x+x+x+x+x+

When we meet up again at the pool's edge, he doesn't leer—or pretend to leer—at me in my bathing suit. He just sits down beside me and lines his knees up with mine.

Coach Clapp shouts instructions for each pair of partners. Before the swimmers begin to assist the non-swimmers, there will be a CPR review, using a plastic dummy head.

I raise my hand.

"Yes, Swan? What is it, you want a same-gender partner?"

"Um, no. We're both Red Cross certified already. Can we skip it?"

"Anyone else, Red Cross? You all . . . practice floating and float-assists. Rest of you, gather around."

The echo of multiple conversations and splashing water inside these tile walls creates a welcome din. I stand in the waist-deep shallow end and put my hand on Edward's lower back as he topples backward from the edge into a floating position.

He tentatively spreads his arms wide, but he leaves his ankles perched on the ledge.

Voices reach us from the CPR lesson, the same phrases over and over._ Can you speak? You—go and get help. You—call 911. _

He looks at me from the corner of his eye, reluctant to turn his head from its dead-center position. His hair fans out like a watery crown. "Were you really telling Alice that I need you?"

"Asks a person who can't even float on his own."

He smirks. "I'm not denying it. Just surprised you talked to her about it. And that you said it was nice."

"Try to relax. And stop cheating—you're actually making it harder on your abs, with your feet on the ledge. Make your body into a straight line."

"Sorry, I stopped listening after you said harder."

"Shut up. Charm isn't getting you out of this."

"That counts as charm? I'm better than I thought."

I try scowling to keep from laughing.

"Okay, but . . . what if I . . ." He allows his feet to drift away from the wall and simultaneously reaches for me with his nearest arm. It looks involuntary.

"What if you what? If you drown, I'll totally resuscitate you."

He laughs. "Don't make fun of me."

The chanting starts again._ Can you speak? You—go and get help. You—call 911. _

"I just find it fascinating that there's something I'm better at than you."

"Still making fun."

"You're doing really good. You're floating. I could let go."

"Don't."

So I don't. I make sure he can feel my hand supporting his back.

"Shouldn't you be distracting me with all sorts of useless information about how floating is a function of surface tension and my body mass index?"

"Would that help? Because, honestly, your BMI is disadvantageous to floating. Too much muscle mass, not enough fat."

"Ah. There we go. I think you just insulted me by telling me I have too many muscles. I'm kind of flattered. And confused."

"But are you distracted?"

"Sure. Well done." He still has a pretty firm grip on my waist, though.

"Everybody needs an Achilles' heel. Yours is your floating prowess."

"Right."

"Now, if you had boobs, floating would be a breeze. You don't want boobs, do you?"

"What, on myself? No. Wait—maybe yes. Could I have them for just one day? Because I could learn a lot, being alone with a pair of boobs all day."

"Jesus Christ. I should have known."

"Is it time to flip over to my front? I'm going to have a situation here."

"We're doing fronts tomorrow. Breathe deeply. Your lungs are like a flotation device. More important than boobs. Or BMI. Feel that?"

"Yeah." His chest expands, slow and steady, and I can see the pulse in his carotid artery start to calm. "I could hang out like this all day."

I want to tell him that's why floating is taught as a safety skill, but I don't think that's what he means. "Me, too."

The CPR kids are really getting this mantra drilled into them. _Can you speak? You—go and get help. You—call 911. _It's strange to think of my friends being in danger, needing to know CPR. That might be my world, but it isn't theirs. I look at Edward's face, and I can see him listening, too. This is what's been making him nervous—not the floating.

"Just ignore them."

I wipe a splatter of water off of his cheekbone.

"How did you get to be so good at this?"

"What, float assists? Charlie, I guess."

Edward's eyes suddenly brim with tears, and he arches his head back to let water wash over his face. When he emerges again, blinking, he grins like nothing happened and silently mouths in unison with our classmates: _Can you speak? You—go and get help. You—call 911. _

+x+x+x+x+x+

I get called out of French class to see Dr. Berty, who gives me a sealed envelope from Evergreen Manor. He offers his condolences about Mrs. Cope and mentions that the nurse's office can recommend grief counselors if I want one. "The home really values your volunteer work, so when you're ready to go back—really ready—do think about it."

As I'm walking out, he calls out to me. "Oh, and Bella." He makes eye contact with me, and then looks pointedly at the envelope. In a quiet voice he says, "Bring Edward. No one else."

I shove the envelope into my bag. _Bring Edward? Where?_

I'm about to rejoin my class, but instead I take the stairs to a little-used girls' bathroom. It's totally deserted, as usual. I pinch my left lobe. "Make an excuse. Third floor, northeast corner."

I hear him clear his throat in confirmation. A few minutes later he finds me in the roomy handicapped stall.

He looks around. "Again I ask, why is there a wheelchair-accessible stall on the third floor, with no elevators anywhere?"

"For teenagers to make out, I guess."

"Oh. Excellent planning, then." He sidles up close to me, taking me at my word. His warmth and the faint chlorine smell still on his skin wrap around me, and I take a deep breath and check myself. _Serious business, Swan._ _Remember?_

I lean away from him, wincing to indicate I actually have something else in mind. "Also, they install a mechanized stair lift when a person in a wheelchair visits or enrolls."

"You know everything."

"Until five minutes ago, I did." I wave the envelope in front of his eyes, along with a scrap of tissue paper where I've scribbled out what Dr. Berty said to me. After he reads it, I flush the paper, and together we unseal the envelope. It's the deed to Mrs. Cope's safe deposit box. Actually, more than that. Two deeds to two safe deposit boxes.

Edward and I stare at each other, disbelief hanging in the air. _Dr. Berty, now?_ I don't know who cracks first, but after both of us start howling with laughter, it's no surprise when a hall monitor bursts in and marches us to the principal's office.

+x+x+x+x+x+

**AN part 2:** Hey! Thanks for reading! If you're considering donating to Fandom for Colorado wildfires compilation, you'll find an outtake I wrote (Edward #1's POV, roundabout the hospital cafeteria scene from my story Always an Edward). The fires are out and it seems like ancient history, but the devastation remains and it's not limited to forests, either. Lots of families lost their homes. See "fandomcause (*) info" for more. The deadline to donate is September 24 and the comp comes out October 1. Okay that's my PSA. XOXO.

+x+x+x+x+x+


	11. A Golden Ratio

**Chapter 11: A Golden Ratio**

As much as I try not to make trouble for Charlie, sometimes it's unavoidable. I miss curfews. I call him at the last minute to bail on family time for my "friends." He thinks I'm clumsy and a space cadet based on how often I bump and bruise myself "running into things." Other times, just fitting in at school means doing things I know will get me in trouble. Occasionally he flips out, and I get to see him have the chance to really be a dad.

Like right now. Here we are, Edward and I, fidgeting in molded plastic chairs in Principal Greene's office. Apparently, when two honors students get written up for truancy one week, then are caught skipping class in a bathroom the next week, it raises a red flag. Parents get called.

Charlie is not happy. He's standing here in his EMT uniform, trotting out all his best dad knowledge. He shakes his head at me and makes sad eyes, as if to show me he's disappointed, but I can see he's not really sure how big of a deal this is. I can guess how he got here so fast, and I feel a little guilty to have pulled him away. Probably put the sirens on and everything. His radio crackles with codes I'm not supposed to understand.

"What the hell kind of baloney is this? I'm getting called down here in the middle of a shift now, to deal with you two bozos skipping class and holing up in the ladies room together for . . . well, I don't know what for."

"It was—"

He puts a hand up. "And I don't want to know. Well, not this minute anyhow."

I glance at Edward, who is doing his best to look bored. Mr. Greene, who has never been much of a disciplinarian, leans against the windowsill and looks on with interest. His Tupperware of half-eaten lunch sits open on his desk. A hummus sandwich with sprouts.

"I'm just saying, we—"

"You know what? I've had about enough of 'we.' _We_ is about to cool way down." Charlie waves his arms between Edward and me as if wiping away an invisible thread. "You . . . young lady . . . you speak for yourself. Let's leave him out of it."

"Dad! I mean . . . okay. Speaking for myself, it's no big deal. My grades are fine. The year's almost over, and I'm still at the bottom edge of the curve when it comes to cutting class, statistically speaking."

"Statist—what? You're not a statistic—you're my daughter." He stretches his arm toward the window, pointing at his ambulance out in the parking lot. "And in my experience, the road between 'no big deal' and a goddamn tragedy is . . . it's—it's about as wide as blinking your eyes. So you better believe this gets my attention."

I don't really know how to respond to this. _Why is this the thing that gets your attention?_, a voice inside me says, and I think of the stakeout last summer when he believed I was sleeping over at Alice's for a week—_a week, Dad?_—and want to split open and feel all my guts pour out like liquid onto the threadbare rug. I peek at Edward, and he gives me a tight smile that stands in for a shrug.

Charlie straightens up and turns to Mr. Greene. "Speaking of paying attention, why am I the only one here? Where are this one's parents?"

Mr. Greene, who has been sneaking glances at the indicator lights on his speakerphone this whole time, phrases his answer carefully. "We're still in the process of reaching his . . . guardians."

Edward is sullen now, staring at the ground. "I'm almost eighteen. I can take care—"

"Oh, right. The guardians." Charlie moves closer to Edward and speaks directly to him. "Mr. Cullen, I know your situation. Believe me when I tell you I looked into it as soon as my daughter so much as mentioned your name. Foster parents or no foster parents, I still expect you to know how to act. Don't think I'm about to give you the benefit of the doubt because you haven't had proper role models."

"_Dad_." I hiss. This is good, maybe. It gives me a channel for whatever I'm feeling.

Edward raises his head, the words sinking in. If he's mad, he's conditioned to mask it. It's in keeping with _typical teenager_.

I reach out and find Edward's forearm. His muscles are tensed, clenching the armrests. He might go with _surly youth_ or _suck-up boyfriend_ any minute now, but beneath it all is what's real: just Edward, alone in the world. Foster parents and no foster parents, both.

"Dad, seriously. I can't believe you just said that—as if not having parents is something he can control."

I glare. Saying that out loud makes me realize I'm mad about so much more than I can own up to right now. Tears sting my eyes, and I know it's out of proportion to what Charlie thinks is going on. Jeez. I can't deal with this. Not after the twenty-four hours I've had.

He scratches his jaw. "You never have a need for 'benefit of the doubt,' Bells. I've never seen that sort of excuse from you, growing up with only me. Why should your . . . friend be any different? You better believe I won't hold back if someone leads my only daughter astray." He says the words, but I can see he looks sheepish.

"I'm not that easily led. I think you know that." My voice wavers.

"Uh-huh," he says.

Edward flips his hand over and grasps for my palm without looking at me.

"I appreciate your concern, but it's unnecessary. I'm working with a pretty healthy margin, and I'm not going to jeopardize MIT or even next week's big meet, for that matter. Don't you think I know exactly how many classes I can skip and still get straight As?"

I raise my eyebrows at Mr. Greene, and he corroborates my claim with a nod.

"No one's questioning your grades, Miss Swan." Mr. Greene pauses to take his tea tree oil toothpick out of his mouth, then leans forward with his palms on his knees like a coach. "It's just that sometimes when students who have no history whatsoever of disciplinary problems start acting out, it's because they want us to notice something. And we're here noticing, you know. That's the general idea. Safe space to get it out and all that, if in fact there's anything going on."

For a split second, this makes sense. I feel Edward's pulse in my palm. Or my pulse, maybe. The room gets very quiet. Either my guard is down because of all that's been happening, or my feelers are on high alert—also because of all that's been happening—but it occurs to me that Mr. Greene might be in the same camp as Dr. Berty. Is he a sleeper agent for the resistance? Is Charlie? Are they both? Why do I want so badly to spill the beans all of a sudden?

No. Charlie doesn't know a thing, I decide. He'd never be capable of standing there baiting me, inviting me to ask for help, casual as can be. I'm certain of that much.

"Bella? Earth to Bella." Mr. Greene says.

I look at Edward. He looks at me, brow furrowed.

The office door opens, and in walks Carlisle, all blonde and muscled, not a hair out of place. He gives the room the patented two-second scan of a career agent—an inventory of persons, exits, anything out of place. I see him take in Charlie's uniform and radio. The way Edward clenches my hand.

Charlie sizes him up, skeptical. They shake hands.

"Carlisle Benefici. Sorry I couldn't be here sooner. I was scrubbed in on a procedure."

"University Hospital?"

"Not quite. Federal prison hospital. I'm an anesthesiology nurse."

Charlie makes a _humph_ noise, surprised, and I side-eye Edward. Did I know this about Carlisle's cover? He gives my hand a _we'll-talk-later_ squeeze.

Mr. Greene starts giving Carlisle the play-by-play of our very out-of-character transgressions. Whatever window may have been open is closed now. It was probably far fetched, anyway.

Carlisle puts on a good show of being very parentally concerned. While they talk, I sink deep in my chair and stare at the ceiling. I let go of Edward's hand and press my fingertips to my eyelids, trying my breathing exercises. It's a technique intended to aid us in calming our minds before showtime in a hot zone, but I use it for other things, too—not just when I'm about to navigate death and mayhem. I like the peaceful feeling it gives me. It's like self-hypnosis. I've gotten pretty good at it and could probably put myself to sleep in this stiff plastic chair if I set my mind to it.

I don't get to hang out in my head space for long before Edward shakes my shoulder. I lift up from my slouch to find everybody is looking at me.

"Well, Miss Swan?" Mr. Greene seems to expect something.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Your consequence. What do you think? You skipped class twice this month, and the goal is for you to stop and think about why it's not a good idea."

"Oh." I look at Edward, who is pressing both hands against his mouth, suppressing something. He won't make eye contact. Apparently he's been listening to whatever I've been tuning out. "I decide, huh?"

"That's right." Mr. Greene beams.

"You're asking me to . . . what, ground myself? For skipping class twice this month?" I blink at him. Charlie is watching me. Carlisle, too.

Mr. Greene shrugs. "Doesn't have to be grounding. You can do an extra assignment, for example. The point is you hold yourself accountable, and you define the punishment. And the same goes for Edward."

I can hear the cackle under Edward's cough. It bursts out of him like an air bubble from a leaky faucet.

I'm at a loss for how to answer. Truly drawing a blank. Is there an upper limit to the things I can be pardoned for this way? Because while we're at it, there are a few things I'd like to get off my conscience.

"Trust me, you'll feel better. Hah! I might write up a case study."

I look at Edward, knowing that this will make me lose it altogether. I take in his red face and the way he jiggles his leg, and I just open my mouth wide and laugh. There's some commotion from Mr. Greene and the various parents and guardians in the room at the sight of me quaking with laughter, tears flowing down my cheeks. They wonder if I'm on drugs, and I don't care. They figure out I'm probably emotionally exhausted due to losing Mrs. Cope, and I think this is probably true. A decision is made to get me home where I can just get some rest. I never stop laughing the entire time. I never stop wiping my hysterical tears on Edward's T-shirt, which is pressed against my cheek for some reason.

+x+x+x+x+x+

I wake up in my bed a few hours later, hot and squinting at the late afternoon sun. Edward is reading on the easy chair at the foot of my bed. I kick his foot.

"Hey. How did you get in?" I glance at the fire escape window, which is locked.

"Your dad decided he trusts me after all. He didn't want you to be alone, so he invited me to stay."

"Huh. Did he tell you to keep one foot on the floor at all times or something?"

"Surprisingly, no."

"Then get in here, will you?"

He cracks a smile and flops onto the bed on his stomach. "Wasn't sure if you'd want me to."

I flip the blankets off myself and turn to face him, propping my head on my hand. "Did you nap? You were up as late as me."

"I dozed a little. Read more of this." He tosses the Hemingway book onto my bedside table.

"Are we suspended?"

"Nope. It counts as a sick day. Tomorrow, too, if we want."

I decide I like this idea. We can wait a day or two to follow up on our bank clues and our undead mark's medical chart. Oh, except for prepping the team. Our meet is Saturday.

He sees my gears turning and smiles at me. "Don't think about math team. Angela can handle prep, and you still have Friday." He shifts to block the sun's rays from my eyes.

"What time is it?"

"It's, I guess, time to think about the consequences of what you did, young lady."

"Shut up. Oh, ow. My stomach feels sore from laughing so hard."

"Hmm." I'm giggling, and the movement makes his eyes drift to the bottom edge of my sweater. His hand follows, stroking gently across the fabric as if testing the waters. Just like that, I've almost stopped breathing. He rolls the hem between his fingers and clears his throat. "Did you get enough rest?"

How does he make his voice so low and heavy like that? "Yes."

I tear my eyes away from his hand and force myself to look back at his face. Oh, Jesus. He's still gazing at my stomach where the tiniest sliver of skin must be showing, only now his eyebrows are bunched together, and his mouth hangs open. When I feel his knuckles graze my skin, it makes me suck in a breath, which makes him close his eyes. My stomach tightens, but in a new way. I see him notice. His tiny smile.

"Does it hurt now?"

"No. I don't know."

His whole hand fans out against my skin, his fingers warm and strong where I'm pale and peach-soft. I watch the muscles in his throat flex.

"I like it."

His eyes flash open, dart to mine, and lock me in place. "It. What _it_ do you like?" He doesn't even really say this last word. He breathes it.

While waiting for me to answer, he bends his head to put his lips on my neck.

"I . . . you know." I clear my throat. "I like . . . you."

"Mmhmm." His fingers trace the lower edges of my rib cage, and his mouth moves against my collarbone. I wonder if he's hard, if I would feel it if I rolled on top of him right now. What would he think of me? He kisses my jaw and the skin behind my ear, avoiding my earlobe. So careful. "You like fooling around, or . . . um."

I can tell by the way he slows and goes still that he's listening for a real answer. "I like that you make me turn my brain off."

"Ungh. Bella." He rises up. His face is scrunched up, eyes closed. I guess I can imagine how that sounded.

I grasp his hand to keep it pressed against my skin. His fingers are tap, tapping against my ribs. "No, I mean . . . it's not anything bad. Really, it's not. I was thinking today that everybody else is a sort of question mark in my mind, like something I need to solve or I can't move forward. You know how I get in my zone when I'm working on problem sets, and the first thing I do is sort out the easy tricks from the threats?"

"The threats. Yes."

"I get like that with people, too. There's a sense of panic around everything I don't know or can't predict. Sometimes that's, like, everyone. Except when I'm with you."

He opens his eyes, but without really looking at me. He looks at the wall behind my head, at my pillow. He nods. "Ah. You know all my secrets. I'm like the one solid, non-variable thing in your world."

"No." I line up my fingers over his fingers inside my shirt. He's looking me in the eye now. "Not exactly. More like . . . I can stop churning so hard . . . I can get outside of my head when I'm with you, because I'm just never trying to solve you. I don't know what you might or might not do, and sometimes I think about it, but never in a way that's like, a worry. Because I trust you. You surprise me, and I like it. All the time."

"That's what you mean. That's what you like." He says it like a statement, confirming. A crease-dimple appears on the side of his mouth.

"Yes."

That must be a good enough answer for him, because I can feel the smile widen on his lips when he kisses me. I can feel it in my bones when he kisses me harder, then harder still, then looser and hotter. I take a chance then—I roll him so I can rest my weight on top of him and yes, I feel him underneath me, and I think he knows I want to feel him. I make sure of it, feeling a surge of confidence, straddling and grinding against him. He groans and curses, holding my face close to his, whispering into my mouth.

What am I to him, I wonder. A question mark? Does he try to read my mind? Or does he know? I think of how to make it easier for him, and this makes me pull away to sit up straight, and before he can manage to protest I lift my sweater up and off. My shirt goes with it.

I giggle to see his mouth make an "O" shape that matches what he says. "Oh."

His hands fall back to the pillow behind him, arms bent like goal posts. I move to lift his hands onto my body, and he weaves his fingers through mine, holding me still.

"Shh, hey. Not so fast." He laughs, hearing himself. "Let me look?"

He brings our joined hands down to my hips instead.

He curls his lips away from his teeth and narrows his flinty eyes. "I didn't picture a purple bra."

"You pictured some other color?"

I'm teasing him, but he nods gravely. "White. Black. I thought about this so many ways. You . . . Jesus Christ. So beautiful." He sits up, pulls me flush against him. So warm. _Can best friends do this_, I wonder? _Does this change things too much_? He bends his head down, trying to not stop looking at me.

He closes his eyes slowly, then opens them slowly.

"Are you actually . . . "

He does it again. Close, open, close. "For the vault. Yes. Oh, God, this is a good one." He opens his eyes, kisses my shoulder, wraps me close again. This time when he kisses my neck, breathes across my skin, pulls strands of hair from his mouth, it's slower, like he's holding himself back. I can feel him trembling. He cups me with both hands and bites my lip a little when he hears me whimper.

I think he can tell what he's doing to me because he keeps returning to the spots where I feel it the most—my nipples through the fabric, the curve below. I hear his ragged breath in my ear. "Take it off?"

"You take yours off."

"I'm not wearing a bra." There it is again—smiling while kissing me.

"Your shirt, then." My own breathing is starting to calm.

"I don't want to let go." He laughs like he's joking, but I think he's serious. His thumbs over the lace fabric are serious.

"Okay, fine." He whips his shirt off and is reaching for me again by the time I reach back to unhook. Before the fabric falls away, he clutches me close and whispers in my ear. "Don't get shy, okay? I know you, and I know it's broad daylight, and in about ten seconds it's going to cross your mind that you've never done this before, and I just want you to not get nervous about me. Okay? Not about me. Not about us."

I smile. I want to hear him say _us_ again. But even as I nod, I pinch my lip between my teeth.

He holds my gaze with his while he crumples my bra and tosses it aside. The next thing I feel is his hand on me. Covering me. Both hands. His jaw flexes.

"Oh my God. Would it be weird to say thank you?"

"Probably, yes."

"Okay, then. I'm definitely not saying it."

Yep. Still my best friend. I love his face so much right now, the way it changes a thousand times in a minute. I love the way he peeks at me and plays even while he's holding me and staring and moving his mouth all over me, making those not-messing-around noises. I might love everything. I might love him.

+x+x+x+x+x+

**AN:** Thank you for reading! Extra special thanks to **happymelt**, **midsouthmama**, and **faireyfan** who spent precious time beta'ing and prereading during a week when children were feverish and school activity commitments collided with long work hours. Love, love, love.


	12. Synthesis

**AN: **I know! I'm really truly appalled at myself and so, so sorry for letting all this time go by between updates. I will spare you the details, but I had a lot of family, work, travel, volunteer, and social stuff happening all at once. The worst of it is over! I'm back on track, I promise. Many thanks to the extremely lovely and oh-so-patient **happymelt**, **midsouthmama** and **faireyfan** for betaing and pre-reading! When we last left Bella and Edward, they were making out in her bedroom after a series of revelations about Mrs. Cope and the man they thought they killed in Gasworks Park. **  
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**Chapter 12: Synthesis**

I jolt awake some time later and blink in the semi-darkness, vaguely conscious of a warm body walling me off from the edge of the bed and beyond.

"Alice."

"Nuh-uh. She has less facial hair. Guess again." He chuckles into the nape of my neck.

"I mean I was supposed to go somewhere with those guys . . . after school." I yawn and stretch. "Fremont, maybe? To find a prom dress. What time is it?" I can just make out a sliver of almost-night sky through my window.

"It's just about eight now. I talked to Al when she called earlier."

I twist around to face him. "Did you tell her I was asleep next to you?"

"I was vague." He pushes strands away from my eyes.

"Are we still alone?"

"As much as we ever are." He smiles at me, and I think he's calling up the mental images of how we spent our alone time earlier this evening. I hope that's what makes him smile. When my adrenaline gave way to drowsiness, I'd tried to fight it, but his hands stroking my hair soothed me into a nap.

"Was she pretty annoyed?"

"No, she heard what happened at school. She wants a rain check. And there was something about Etsy links." He adjusts the T-shirt I'm wearing—his T-shirt—where it's twisted around the waistband of my leggings. His own chest is bare. "She used some disturbing words, like . . . fishtail. And peplum. Please let me never find out what those things are."

That makes me giggle. "I'll find something I don't hate, and if I don't hate it, you won't hate it."

"I don't hate my shirt on you. Maybe you can wear this to prom."

"It's cute, right? Covers my ass. With the right shoes . . . " I like the glint in his eye when I play along. I like his hands sliding up beneath the fabric. "I'll wear this if you wear that."

"Jeans and no shirt? Uh-uh. No deal. I don't get many chances to use my tux, so. You know."

"Oh, right. I forgot you have that. From . . ." I know the woman's name—Tanya—the one he had orders to seduce in Chicago, but I don't want to say it.

He sighs and stiffens next to me. I feel cool where his hands have left my body.

"Rewind. What the hell is wrong with me? Forget I mentioned that stupid thing. I'll get a new tux. I'll rent one like normal people."

"It's okay."

"No, it's not okay. I'll get Esme to help me."

"Why are you avoiding the subject? Don't get all weird. It's just . . . part of your past. Lots of people have a past. I can handle it."

He snorts and sits up straight, folding his arms across his chest and pulling his knees in close. "There's nothing to handle. _My past?_ That wasn't me. That has nothing to do with me. Or us." He looks at the ceiling.

"You don't need to protect me. I want to know." I wish I hadn't just been thinking about his photographic memory, because now that's all I can think of. The images he must have seared into his brain. I looked her up online once—I've seen her flowing actressy hair and the way her hips made the perfect place for a man to put his hand. So many men, so many pictures. "The truth can't be worse than what I'm imagining."

He laughs a sharp sort of laugh I've never heard before, then groans and scrubs his hands through his hair. "What was I thinking? I'm burning the suit. Consider it burned. Ashes. New topic, please."

"See, this is just what I mean. Why would you burn it? You're making it sound like an even bigger deal than I thought. What am I supposed to think? It's not like I've ever been assigned to . . . you know. Be a Honeypot."

"Don't be ridiculous. Over my dead body." Two patches of pink light up his cheeks.

"What, you have a say all of a sudden?"

"What the hell, Bella." He leaps out of bed and grabs his hoodie from the chair, yanking it on over his bare skin. "What are we even talking about? You have a sudden interest in having sex with a stranger? On that douchebag's orders?"

I pull him by the arm until he's sitting next to me. "Shh. Watch what you say." He knows Aro could be listening in at any time.

"I don't give a shit about that. Why are you winding me up about something that will never happen? And I mean _never_. I'm serious as fuck right now." He leans over, resting his head in his hands, and stares at the floor between his feet. His knee is bouncing so fast it's practically vibrating.

"You're winding yourself up."

"Promise you'll never do it."

"I have no way of—"

"Just humor me." I can only see the edge of his face right now, but it's turning red.

"Okay, jeez. No Honeypot jobs. I promise. Like they'd ever send me for that anyways."

He lifts his head, but there's a grimace on his face and a new vein in the middle of his forehead. And the circles under his eyes look super dark. He looks so world-weary. So adult in a way that I can't relate to. He opens his mouth and gazes around the room, searching for something. _What is so hard for him to say? _I wonder.

"So you had sex with her?"

"It wasn't about sex, okay? It was about manipulation."

"Umm, yeah, I know. I know that. It didn't mean anything important."

He strokes his jaw and gets to his feet. He shuffles a few paces to my dresser, where he studies the framed photos for what seems like a long while.

"You don't get it." He shakes his head. He makes eye contact for the briefest second before fixing his gaze somewhere on the floor between us. "You talk about that Chicago situation like . . . like it's something you need to measure up to. If you would just stop measuring for a minute and start feeling, you'd maybe understand a little better. Because . . . that experience—I didn't choose that. It was chosen for me."

"I—" Oh, God. I can't speak. I don't know what he needs from me.

"You're the only one in the world who might get that. Though I can see why you don't want to." His voice is cool now, quiet, which only makes me feel unnerved. He jams his feet into his shoes and hoists his bag to his shoulder. "Listen. I should go. I need to get some sleep and get my head right." He has his hand on the doorjamb by the time I scramble out of the bed

"Um, wait. Can we just talk about this?"

"I . . . I can't. It will just make you feel bad." I get a tight smile and a shoulder squeeze, which is awkward. "We'll talk tomorrow."

I sink back onto the edge of my bed, blinking and absorbing his words. I hear him lock the front door behind himself when he leaves. Miss Violet barks once, a dutiful guard dog, then pads back to her cushion near the sofa.

+x+x+x+

After tossing and turning for a while, I text Alice.

_U and Rose still hanging out? I can't sleep. _

_LOL - It's only 9pm, grandma! Beth's Diner in 20 min_, she replies.

I throw on a long cardigan and some shoes, then call a cab. On my way there, I text Edward with my whereabouts and the license number. It's our standing agreement.

_Thanks_, he replies.

The 24-hour diner is all bright colors and clinking silverware, my friends chipper and boisterous under the fluorescent lights. Alice prods me about my dour mood. Rose studies me with narrowed eyes. It's what they do.

There's only so much I can tell them, of course. I say that I screwed up, that I was insensitive and that I might be falling down on the job as a girlfriend. I keep checking my phone for texts, seeing none. Alice makes big round eyes at me, saying she thinks it's good for couples to fight once in a while. I try not to obsess.

The TV bolted to the wall above the booth is tuned to the news. The state legislature is cutting school budgets further to pay for old-age pensions and whatever else the baby boomers need. _What else is new_, Rose jokes.

I see her eyeballing the short-order cooks behind the counter. I wonder what she's looking for—and what she sees. One of the cooks is cute, with good skin and strong arms. He smiles at her once, but doesn't look up from his work otherwise. Is that how real relationships begin here in the civilian world, I wonder? Rose never seems to let it get that far.

The nightly news unfolds. There's a story now about a bridge collapse just over the border in Canada. A small island community is temporarily cut off from the rest of the world, but there's a special factor that makes it both more interesting and less urgent: They're separatists, homesteaders. They have stockpiles and skills and can exist indefinitely that way. There are no new interviews, of course, given the loss of contact. Only archival footage and speculation. Rose looks appalled. _I could not_, she says.

Alice shows me some photos on her phone of dresses she thinks I'd like. I'm half paying attention; my mind keeps wandering to Edward and the things I should have known about Chicago and Tanya. It was almost a year back. I think about how Aro insisted on muting Edward's channel for the duration of the assignment. At the time I thought it was to protect me from accidental transmissions, but now I wonder what Edward might have wanted to say to me. What he was going through.

When he was finally back, two weeks later, I'd said the obligatory _Good job _and _Congrats. _And also:_ I missed you._ He had said _Yeah. I missed me, too_.

+x+x+x+

When I get home, I go straight to my laptop, determined to say in an email what I couldn't muster up in person. That I mean to be better at this. That I'm sorry for trying to reduce his past down to something simple that I can dismiss. That I want him to be able to trust me, to open up to me more.

My heart leaps when I log in, because I see he's sent me 16 emails.

9:16 -_ Are you up? I found something. _

9:20 -_ Never mind. Just got your text. Get on chat ASAP when you get home, will you?_

9:25 -_ Info dump coming up. Read, process, give me your gut check. I might be wrong. Hope I am. _

The rest of his emails are encrypted, which should be unnecessary. The more I piece together what he's telling me, though, the more I understand this abundance of caution.

It's all connected. Not just Mrs. Cope and our bee-sting hit target. All of it. The strands are tenuous, but they're here in these materials—historic virology maps, chemical formulas, disease statistics. INTERPOL significant activity alerts, missing and presumed stolen biohazard materials. Train routes and warehouse blueprints.

The first email is a scan of the page we took from the half-dead man's chart after Shelley led us to his ward in the hospital. It's scrawled with Edward's notes and linked to an old news article attached to another email. The symptoms listed in the chart are consistent with Joham Syndrome, a rare cancer normally only seen in Vietnam war veterans who were exposed to both a certain tropical virus and napalm.

I get up to call Miss Violet into my room, locking the bedroom door once she's inside.

Even among patients who had the cancer, it only proved deadly to vets whose deployments had been short—and it killed none of the local residents. This is the sort of thing that makes an epidemiologist's heart race, because it suggests an acquired immunity. And "acquired immunity" and "cancer" in the same sentence is the stuff Nobel Prizes are made of.

The next email tells of a pair of Romanian researchers who had the prize locked down, it seemed, after identifying a molecule they named EclipseX. It was present only in the resilient patients, and the cellular mechanism was not yet understood, but it blocked metastasis of at least this type of cancer—and maybe others. The science community exploded with predictions of a Stefan-Vladimir cancer vaccine.

But a vaccine never came. The follow-up studies were remarkable for another reason—one that hushed all speculation. The protocol involved taking populations of mice and making them EclipseX-free for comparison purposes. Typically, the technique involved a serum designed to destroy the target molecule, and it would have knocked out plenty of other immunities as well. In this case, whatever was done to rid the mice of their defenses remains a secret, and for good reason.

When cancerous cells were introduced to the weak-immunity mice, the disease flourished—immediately and fatally. According to the rumors Edward was able to track down, Stefan and Vladimir returned to their labs in the morning to find cages full of mice disfigured by massive tumors, grayed, dead. They asked authorities to quarantine their labs and lock down their records. Then they disappeared into self-exile, having accidentally discovered a weaponizable serum that makes cancer unstoppable.

The rest of Edward's emails fill in the holes of a story that I'm afraid is the sinister masterwork of a man who already holds too much power over my friends and me. I reach for some chewable Pepto Bismol tabs and then gather the blankets around me in bed. The laptop hums and warms my knees. Miss Violet snores in the corner.

Mrs. Cope's dementia may have been fake, but her cancer was real, and rare, and of the same strain as our bee-sting man. Edward's circles and notes on her medical chart point out that in her it was more slow-moving, as if some factor was modulating the progression of the disease. Making it mimic the properties of a natural death from cancer—so as not to attract attention or cause alarm.

Then there are the seemingly random incidents in recent weeks. The trainloads of pharmaceuticals Aro claimed we had to protect from anti-pharma terrorists: his raw materials. Our infiltration of the Centers for Disease Control: a way to monitor who knows what. The warehouse Leah maimed herself gaining access to: Aro's staging site, I'm guessing, as it's now cordoned off as an incident scene.

In the end, I have to agree with Edward's read on the situation. Aro is in the process of refining the perfect bioweapon—one capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people, all while having the appearance of a natural epidemic. With our bee-sting hit, we helped him test it. By perpetuating a myth about a bioweapons terrorist threat, we've helped him hide it. And if we don't do something, one day soon we'll be a part of unleashing it. Instead—somehow—we have to stop him.

My mind skips to Mrs. Cope. Dr. Berty. The deeds to the safe deposit boxes, our secret escape routes, and a few cryptic messages here and there. It all seems so flimsy in the face of something so major. I don't know if we can do it, or if we should even try.

I open a chat window and compose my response to Edward. _I hate this, but it all checks out. I think you're right. Please tell me you have a plan._

He logs on immediately._ I have some ideas. I need your brain on this._

_How do we start? _I reply.

_Bank vaults open at ten tomorrow. Let's get some facts and decide._

_About earlier - I'm trying, okay? You know I have your back no matter what, right?_

A few moment pass in which I watch his cursor blinking. _Counting on it. Likewise. _

That makes me feel a little better. But it's not enough.

_Can I come over?_

_We can't discuss this out loud. It's not safe._

_I know. That's not what I want._

The cursor blinks again._ Stay put. I'll come to you._

+x+x+x+

He uses the fire escape and comes in through my propped-open window, even though I know he has a door key. I roll my eyes at him and flip the blankets back when he hovers uncertainly near the bed.

When he's lying next to me, mirroring me, I see terrible exhaustion and sadness in his face and wonder if that's what he sees in mine. He scrunches up his face and pulls my purple bra out from under the pillow. He fondles the fabric for a while, half-smiling, before tossing it to the ground.

"It's funny how I was feeling so normal just a while ago. For the first time in, I don't know, forever. You and me, just being together like . . . like the way you hear about people being." He says this in a low whisper, but it's not our usual confidential whisper. This is him trying not to let me hear his voice break.

"Well," I say. "It's also normal for people to have discussions about tough things. You can tell me something that's weighing on you. And I can listen and not judge you."

He nods and closes his eyes. I curl my fingers around his ribcage and brace my forehead against his.

"She was the daughter of a double agent we were trying to get to talk. Tanya." He sighs, and I can feel his breath on my face. "I was told to get her naked to make sure she wasn't wearing a wire. And I was supposed to tease her about her flaws—the slightest stretch marks, barely visible—because the psych profile said it would break her down, distract her. Which it did." He pauses, clears his throat. "I don't know if it was necessary. But it was the protocol."

"And I was told to make sure her birthmark was visible in case they really wanted to torment her mother with the images. I did everything right. I walked out on her as soon as we were finished so I could puke into an ice bucket in the hallway. And then I passed off my PocketCam to a handler."

"Was it the the first time you had sex?"

He doesn't say anything for while, just clutches my hip.

"I try not to think about it like that. But . . . yeah."

"I wish I could give you a blank slate somehow."

"That's a nice thought, but . . . I don't know."

"It won't be easy, but maybe we can earn it. Together." My voice is lower than a whisper.

His eyes lock on mine, and I know he knows I'm talking about more than Tanya. That I need this as much as he does. He narrows his eyes, and I know that we will do everything within our power to dismantle this scheme of Aro's, because the unspoken dream of his existence and mine—something we crave desperately—is within our sights: redemption.

+x+x+x+


	13. Chapter 13: Reversible Dynamics

**Chapter 13: Reversible Dynamics  
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I'm awake and moving as soon as I hear the telltale scrapes and beeps of the garbage trucks making their sluggish progress down the street. The sun might not be up, but that sound means it's morning, and morning means the beginning of a new sort of life. I tug my hair into a ponytail.

"Get up. Come on."

The trash men whistle and shout to one another, gruff and unintelligible, punctuated with the squeal of machinery. _Hep. Yo. Hep. Yo-oh. _

I splash cold water on my face in my bathroom and then rummage for a relatively clean sweater in the pile next to my bed. I toss pieces of Edward's clothing at him as I come across them.

"It's the middle of the night." His groan reaches me from somewhere beneath a pillow. One lone foot pokes out beyond the edge of my comforter.

"It's almost five. We need to . . . _study_." I press my fingers to his ankle, knowing he'll hiss and scramble. "Remember?"

"Okay. Okay," he says, stirring the sheets with his legs, sitting up, yawning.

I stand with my fists on my hips, trying to force my grin into a stern expression. "Dude. How can we speed things along, here?"

He blinks and smirks, dragging a pillow onto his lap. "Er. I might need a minute."

"Oh." I frown. "You know . . . my grandmother embroidered that."

He raises his eyebrows. "Possibly for this exact purpose. Have you thought of that? It's not like wake-up boners were just invented this century."

"Well, no, but—it's just . . . delicate. What are you going to do?" Miss Violet lifts her sleepy head at this, whining at my flustered tone of voice.

"Everybody calm down. This is clearly a modesty pillow, not a humping pillow. Humping pillows are more oblong. Duh."

I pinch my lips together, torn between cracking up and freaking out. "Can you stop screwing around? We have work to do." I turn around and busy myself with reorganizing my backpack and double-checking the safe deposit box papers. I feel strangely giddy to see him so lighthearted this morning. It feels different from before—like it's really real and just for me. Not just for show.

After a moment I hear him shuffle into the bathroom, where he continues to chatter at me through the door.

"Charlie around?"

"He worked the overnight. He'll be home at seven," I say. "So that gives us, like, ninety minutes. We can compare notes for a while, be gone before he gets here, work a bit from the coffee shop, and then take care of our errands."

"Mind if I use the shower?"

"Go ahead. Towels are in the cabinet."

"Hollywood or navy shower?"

"Wha . . . what?"

"Long and hot, or quick and cold? How much time do I have?"

"Quick and . . . hot. Whatever you want. Just quick."

"Coast guard shower. I can work with that."

I roll my eyes. I understand less and less how his brain works. I guess I also like it that way, which makes me mutter at myself in annoyance. "Get a grip, Swan."

I head downstairs, leaving Miss Violet to howl along with the sound of him whistling in the shower.

+x+x+x+x+

We show up at the bank with our paperwork concerning Mrs. Cope's safe deposit boxes. We knock out our signals with the SatCom zapper, then go in to meet with the teller. There's a procedure, and at least some of it seems legit. We manage to avoid a paper trail, whether thanks to some prearranged setup or merely lax systems, I can't say.

In one box is everything we'd seen the previous week: sentimental snapshots, a few moderately valuable brooches and earrings, and a few hundred Euros. In the second box we find a sealed envelope containing four perfect sets of identity papers—one French and one Canadian package for each of us, a coded message, a handful of BioSeal canister microchips, and something I can't quite believe I am seeing: wrapped in a plain tea cloth like it's a loaf of banana bread, a gold bar.

Edward methodically pockets the small loose items and seals the documents inside the Mylar-lined pouch in his jacket before turning his attention to the gold. "Cool. This looks like a doorstopper you can buy from Sharper Image," he says.

"Um. I guess we could pretend it's one of those. No one would suspect."

I watch in silence while he heaves the bar onto the floor to prop open the room's door.

He glances at me, grinning. "Heavier than it looks."

"Yeah." It should be about 27 pounds. Around the same as three gallons of milk, one extra large Thanksgiving turkey, or two bowling balls. "So . . . I'm assuming you scanned the trading tickers when we walked through the bank lobby?"

He nods absently. "Gold is up 3.2 percent."

"To?"

"Seventeen-sixty. Per . . .ounce?"

"Per troy ounce. That's 1,760 dollars, by the way. Not $17.60."

"And how many troy ounces in this thing?"

"They vary. But the standard is 400."

I watch his head tilt as he does a rough calculation. His fingers swirl in the air and his lips move. And I watch his eyes widen when he gets to a number. He looks at me, his face pale.

"That's, like, $700,000."

I nod.

"Gulp. Okay. Let's get this up off the floor."

+x+x+x+x+

We sit in a clump of trees near the water tower in Volunteer Park and decode the message. Well, Edward sits. I pace. It's private here, and no one is around, but we work silently nonetheless.

The lens decoder reveals the note's optically encrypted script, but that itself is a type of code—words and coordinates mixed with numbers and letters that point us to pages, lines, and syllables in our tattered Hemingway book. Bit by bit, we piece together whole sentences. What emerges is helpful—a supplement to and confirmation of what we've pieced together on our own. The locations of places where Aro is stockpiling materials. The names of people—some of them within the Volturi organization—who have been critical of Aro and might be among his targets. The coordinates of a safe house. The chemical formula for what might be a block for the cancer accelerant—an antidote, in a sense. I kneel down and bounce in place until he maps out the process he'll use to synthesize it.

Edward memorizes the information, then we burn up the scraps. I stand up again and stamp the ashes into dust.

He rolls onto his back next to where I'm standing and snakes a hand up my calf. "Hey, you. We learned in advanced bio that memory is enhanced by making out."

"You did not." I kneel down next to him and hover my face over his.

"Okay. Well, let's say it's a theory of mine. We should test it."

"Like you need help."

"I do. Help me."

So I do.

+x+x+x+x+

The week passes by in a blur. We stay cooperative and docile whenever Aro contacts us, all the while observing his movements and putting our own plans in place. We take our SATs and two of our AP tests. I choose a dress for prom. Edward spends extra time in the science lab under the pretense of prepping for the Volta League statewide meet. I join Charlie for lunch between his EMT shift and the museum, and he introduces me to his ride-along—a fire department recruit in training. Emmett.

"Hey," the guy says.

"Hey," I say. "I know you. You work at Beth's."

"Every Tuesday and Thursday," he says, grinning. His dimples and biceps pop. "Until I get my full-time placement, anyhow. Come on by anytime. Bring your friends."

I nod. "My blonde friend, especially?"

He blushes. "You're observant."

"When it comes to Rose, I am. You're . . . someone she'd like."

I'm sort of surprised I just blurted that out. I think about Emmett's guileless, open face as he ambles away. I don't think he's any sort of operative. If he is, he's a hell of a performer.

"Lucky coincidence," Charlie says.

"Yeah," I say. "Lucky."

+x+x+x+x+

"Dude. Your crumbs are all over the steering wheel." We're halfway to Spokane, where the Volta League's statewide meet is being held. I've taken over driving for the eastern half of the mountain pass, because Edward has never seen the way the valley looks when the sun casts shadows from the west.

"Allow me." He reaches over and swipes at the wheel with his jacket cuff.

"How can you eat that? It looks disgusting."

He shrugs. "You don't know until you try it."

"This is dark chocolate Chex Mix?"

"Mm-hmm." He's enjoying the view already; this light really is perfect.

"Mixed with Cheetos?"

"No. Cheese _puffs_."

"Oh, excuse me."

"Vocabulary tip, Phoenix: puffs are baked, not fried." He smirks and licks the powder from his fingers. "Though I guess you should be eating nothing but nuts and berries right now. Brain food."

I see movement reflected in the windshield as he turns his head toward me in time to see me wincing.

"Sorry. I mean, for the sake of appearances."

I put on a good show for the team, but the truth is we will not be allowed to win the state meet. Winning state means going to nationals, and that's more spotlight than Aro likes for us. I have instructions to tank it.

"It's okay," I say. "I just feel bad. They're working so hard."

I check my rearview mirror and spot Angela following behind us in the rented van, with Ben in the passenger seat hamming it up for her entertainment. Eric is probably asleep on the bench behind them.

"I think Ben is on the ride of his life, win or lose."

"Hmm."

Edward's smile fades, and his eyes narrow as he peers into the windows of cars that pass us by. I know he's scanning faces, storing them away for future reference, just in case. It's his conditioning. I do it, too. We've both been tracking a couple of cars that might be tails.

We used to know who our allies were. It was comforting. Simple. We had an appreciation of the dangers we faced but also confidence that Aro's people were looking out for us. This situation we're in now . . . it isn't just that we've switched allegiances. It's a constant struggle to keep up the Sundial façade.

Normally, if we noticed a tail following us, we'd discuss it openly—maybe even call it in. But now . . . it could be someone from the resistance. They intend to help us, but they're amateurs, and we don't know them. We can't make a false move. Not today. Just thinking about it makes the skin on my neck feel clammy.

The circle of trust is smaller now. For me, it includes one person. I open up my palm to him, and he grasps my hand with exactly the sort of solid, unwavering strength I need.

"I'm gonna smell like chocolate cheese dust now."

"My favorite." His smile and voice are light, but his hold on me is the heaviest thing in the world.

+x+x+x+x+

When we finally pull into the hotel parking lot, it's getting dark, and I'm half in a trance from being on the road so long.

Edward leaps over a suitcase when Ben, loading a bellhop's cart, reaches for my backpack. He catches it just as the weight makes Ben stumble.

"Dang, Bella. Whatcha got in there, a bunch of bricks?"

"Those are my free weights," Edward answers for me. "I started a program."

"Oh, sure, sure," Ben says. He rocks from heel to toe, subtly trying to make himself taller. "I jump rope myself when I'm on the road. Gotta keep the routine portable."

"Good point."

I follow Edward up to his room, and before the rest of the guys from his Science Team show up, we silently transfer the gold to the safe. We're not exactly sure what to do with it, besides carrying it around with us from place to place. It's not like you can just walk into a bank and trade a gold bar for cash without attracting notice. In fact, once these things leave the custody of a commercial vault, it can be hard to get them appraised at full value.

There's an old fixer who works at a casino on the Coeur d'Alene reservation across the Idaho border. Edward's match isn't until the afternoon, so he'll drive out to the casino tomorrow morning while I'm at my meet. Aro thinks they're going to discuss adapting the Snchitsu'umshtsn language for encryption purposes. But Edward has a particular skill at using obscure languages. If there's a way to turn this gold into untraceable money, he'll find out.

My phone starts buzzing with texts from Rose and Alice. I get Rose to admit she wants to go back to Beth's when that cook is working. Alice is game for anything as long as her bass-playing man is away on tour.

I make myself scarce before the chaperones start making rounds. Coach Clapp will put strips of tape on our doors as a way to monitor whether we leave our rooms after lights out.

+x+x+x+x+

Charlie texts me before the meet with best wishes and more apologies for missing the show. I'm happy he got called in to cover someone's absence, because I don't want him to see me lose the match, even though—or maybe because—I'll know I'm capable of winning it.

Edward's Science Team blows their chance at nationals, too. We all go out for milkshakes. Angela and Ben rehash the lightning round obsessively; Ben is convinced there was a malfunction with my buzzer, but I know better.

"I was having an off day, I guess," I say. "Sorry, guys."

We have a Sundial skills refresher course in the high plains near Spokane the next day. It's pouring rain out, so we drill on martial arts and knife throwing indoors. Edward spends an hour coaching Bree on using BioSeal canisters. He has her test everything – food from her plate, an eyelash dusted from his cheek, dirt from the soles of her shoes. When it comes to the latest biohazards, he demonstrates the testing protocol, then clenches his jaw while she repeats his movements exactly.

For the training module, BioSeal canisters have small pieces of fruit preserved inside—strawberries, mandarin oranges—so that the digital readout is backed up with memorable sensory feedback. There's nothing like watching an apple slice turn to grey liquid in an instant to give you a healthy fear of unknown substances.

When she gets ready to test a new designer weapon called the Benito Molecule, he stops her. "There's no antidote for that."

"What about my gloves?"

"Not good enough."

"I won't know, when I'm testing it, if it's this thing or not. Right?"

He chews his cheek for a moment. "Treat everything as if it is. But I'm not letting you touch this."

Instead, he watches as she handles a mystery substance with extraordinary care. She does it perfectly, managing her airway, mucous membranes, skin contact, bystanders. She nods coolly when the digital readout flashes. _Antiperspirant, domestic_.

At lunch, Bree surprises me by scribbling a note on a napkin. How does she even know to do that?

_You were wrong about something_, it says.

I furrow my brow.

_SatCom. He's sometimes listening, not just when we pinch it. _

_I suspected. Didn't know for sure,_ I reply.

_Sometimes he has me do it. Spot checks._

I nod. This is interesting. I stifle the impulse to ask her if there's a schedule to it.

_I heard you guys talking about private things. Sex stuff. Sorry. I didn't mean to._

Her writing is wobbly now, and I look into her eyes as I crumple the napkin and shove it into my pocket. I know what she probably heard. I can't stand that she knows it; I can barely stand knowing it myself.

I wrap her skinny frame in my arms as Edward catches my eye from across the room. I think he can read my lips as I whisper into her ear. I don't care who hears. "No Honeypot jobs for you, either. Not ever. I promise."

+x+x+x+x+

We're back to a normal routine at school the following week, and I'm getting nervous about timing. Something is brewing.

In recent days, Aro has had us create a travel diversion to prevent a convention of epidemiologists from meeting, which might mean someone in that group poses a threat to his plan. Meanwhile, Edward is convinced that the BioSeal canister microchips from Mrs. Cope's safe deposit box are programmed to recognize Aro's bioweapon. This makes the menace seem that much more real and urgent; it exists, and it might be necessary for us to identify it.

He doubles up his efforts to synthesize the compound that was spelled out for us in the most recent coded message.

+x+x+x+x+

We're all out at Beth's eating pancakes when the first shoe drops. One minute I'm sneaking glances at Rose making time with Emmett over the counter, and the next minute I feel Edward's elbow in my side. He's staring at the old-fashioned television bolted to the wall. _Centers for Disease Control_, I hear the announcer say. And _thought to be a severe flu with abnormally swift spread to the lymph nodes and beyond_. The B-roll footage they show is of people wearing masks back in the days of swine flu, but the coverage says only the elderly and infirm seem to be at risk.

We can't react in this setting—in front of Emmett and our friends—so we don't. Not outwardly, anyways. When we stand to leave, Edward pulls me close to his chest, cool as can be, only I feel his heart hammering against his rib cage in time with mine.

+x+x+x+x+

**AN:** I'm told the real Beth's (Diner, not Cafe) in Seattle would never have a TV, so please forgive me taking creative license on that point. And I might as well ask the same of any immunologists re: what is about to come. I tried to do my research but I'm sure there are things I will oversimplify. Thank you all for reading! This story benefits greatly from the time and wisdom of the lovely **happymelt**,** midsouthmama,** and** faireyfan**. - "thanks!"


	14. Chapter 14: The Tyndall Effect

**AN: **Hi. I'm so sorry for the long delay that it sounds ridiculously inadequate to even say that I'm sorry - but I am! AND . . . in the meantime ALL of the remaining chapters have been written and beta'd and will be coming to you over the next few weeks. Many thanks to beta **happymelt**, pre-reader **faireyfan**, and pre-reader emeritus **midsouthmama**. They've all been super gracious and patient. When we last left these guys, Bella and Edward were just hearing breaking news reports of a superflu outbreak that they know Aro is intentionally spreading. Thanks for reading!

**Chapter 14: The Tyndall Effect**

I step out of my bathroom and check for stray dog hairs in the full-length closet mirror. The creamy peony-pink dress is long and narrow, with gauzy layers that cling to me from neck to mid-calf in a way that makes Alice raise an eyebrow.

"I can't believe I'm wearing pink on purpose."

"Not too pink. It's like . . . skin color."

"I guess." I twist to check my reflection. Edward is picking me up in an hour. Prom night. We're going through with it, despite the plague, despite the long nights we spend searching for the cure, despite all we need to do to keep Aro in the dark. We're going through with the corsage and the pictures and an extra-late curfew we pretended to want. What I want, honestly, is sleep. But Edward insists it's important, so . . . we're going. Prom night. "You're definitely sure it's supposed to fit like this?"

"It looks even more perfect than the first five perfect times you tried it on. Have you been doing Pilates in your sleep or something? Because . . . " She tilts her head to the side and looks quizzically at the profile of my ass.

"What? No. I mean, Edward got me hooked on Wii Hula Hoop. It's really fun." That's sort of true. We've been spending the majority of our time in his basement, where he endlessly synthesizes compounds in an attempt to defeat the superflu, and I play noisy video games to give us a cover story. From time to time we trade places so I can do some calculations. The Wii isn't exactly a mixed martial arts workout, but every little bit helps with the stress. We keep hitting a wall with the solution—it seems right on paper, but when we introduce it to the disease culture, nothing happens. The clock is ticking, and people are dying.

Meanwhile, we're ready to move at the drop of a hat, the moment we verify the cure. We have a 20-step escape plan committed to memory, with go bags and tools stashed in various places along the route, and we've erased our tracks everywhere. We've even destroyed the old laptops that were our means of covert communication. It doesn't matter. Until we get this cure in the mail to the Centers for Disease Control and get out, nothing matters.

"Well, yeah. I wish I could see his face when he picks you up."

"Maybe you should." I turn away from the mirror and look at her directly. Sometimes when I see her slouching on my bed with one leg tucked under her, I have such a strong recollection of the kid she used to be at ten, at eight. All those nights when I was missing my mom and just wanted someone—anyone—with me. She's just always been there. My whole life, really. And I don't know how much longer I have before everything changes. "You're really not coming? Not at all?"

She shrugs and throws my grandmother's embroidered pillow at me. "Stop moping, mope-face. When we're seniors, yeah. For sure. Not that you shouldn't be excited for junior prom, because you _totally_ should. It's just not for me right now."

I know her boyfriend is away on tour. I know she's saving her money, trying to scrape together enough cash to travel with Jasper and the Southern Wars after school lets out. She's picked up some shifts copyediting at the _Seattle Beat_, and the hours can be crazy when an issue is going to press_._ What I wouldn't give for her problems.

I shake my head. I'm supposed to be getting ready for a fun night, not giving my friend a hard time. "I know. I know."

"I'll be back by Edward's birthday thing."

"Yeah." I pretend to take an interest in a tiny freckle on my wrist. "I just . . . I'm being silly. All this superflu crap is freaking me out." It's been all over the news, going on a couple of weeks now. People believe it's a natural contagion—albeit a deadly one—that strikes elderly and frail people. It's been seen in cities all along the west coast, plus New York and Miami, and it's gradually moving into rural communities.

"Right? Jasper says half the crowd last night was wearing surgical masks."

"Well, I mean . . . it's not transmitted like that." I plop down on the end of the bed and start easing my feet into the new suede ankle boots Edward bought me.

"And nobody at a Southern Wars concert is in the at-risk age group. And neither are we." She stretches out a black-and-white striped leg and pokes me with her toe. "Hey, come on. You're not the hysterical-panic type, and you're not fooling me. I know what this is about."

If only. How I wish that were true. I turn my head and give her a weak smile. "Okay. What's this about?"

"You haven't had sex with Edward and you're afraid you're going to walk onto the set of some terrible teen movie where people still treat prom night as National Lose Your Virginity Night."

Huh. That's an interesting theory. I twist my lips to the side. "Well. I already know he's not a virgin."

She narrows her eyes. "Since when?"

"Since when have I known or since when has he not been?"

"Okay, both." She starts tugging my hair back into some sort of twist at the back of my head, layering bobby pins on top of bobby pins.

"I kind of made him tell me. That night we had that fight a few weeks ago, you know? I guess it happened last summer in Chicago. Just, like, a fleeting thing. She's long gone. And . . . and anyways we decided we're waiting."

"Well, I guess it's better if he's not all . . . pent up. Thinking with his dick, desperate to put it somewhere."

"Um."

"Except he should want to—_legitimately_—want to put it in you."

"Alice . . ."

"Because you're smoking hot, with brains."

I puff out some air between my lips.

"But if _he_ wants to and _you're_ not sure, no pressure! There's lots of stuff you can do. Slo-o-o-w burn style. A man's lips are underrated, honestly. And listening to him get himself off over the phone. Heh."

"What?" Jesus. I don't even think she realizes I'm in the room anymore. "When do you see Jasper next?"

"So, that's cool. You're talking it over, which is the main thing."

I can't exactly tell her the reasons we're holding out. That our every waking hour is spent puzzling over molecules, chirality, covalent bonds that just won't quite line up. That a nefarious government agent, or his twelve-year-old underling, could be listening in on every conversation, every stray groan and pant. And, somewhere deep down, my fear that the thing tying me to him on a bone-deep level is also the thing that dooms any possible future happiness. We need each other to get out of this mess, and we'll both do anything to make sure we succeed. Will I be able to look at him the same way afterward, assuming we make it? And vice versa?

"Bella? Earth to Bella? I'm finished." Alice waves a can of hairspray in front of my eyes.

"Yeah. Uh, it looks nice. Thank you!"

I swipe on some mascara and blink. And so I'm ready for prom. Almost.

Alice nods her approval and heads out, making me promise to take lots of pictures. I run through my usual final prep list: I stow GoDoze sachets in the hollow heels of my boots, grab a shawl freshly laundered with AntiDoze, stuff my GPS wristwatch into my clutch. _A Sundial scout is always prepared_. There's no room under this dress to strap on a knife, so I nestle a sharpened hairpin into my updo.

I'll have to warn Edward. In case he puts his hands in my hair. Will he? He probably won't.

We did talk about it. Sex. What I told Alice we decided—that part wasn't a lie.

_Do you want to? You know . . . with me?_ I'd said this to him—out loud, half-delirious, shameless. We were in the sub-basement bunker, amid papers scattered on the floor, sweaty and feverish, desperate to distract ourselves. His answer was breath in my ear, a tickle, nothing carrying through the air for microphones to hear. At first it was all _Shh_ and _Oh, Bella_. All throaty laughs tinged with regret. His weight on me was mostly exhaustion—the liberties you take when you're close, I guess—until his heavy-lidded eyes found mine through a curtain of hair, and I felt his hand wedged between us, between my legs, trembling. His eyes narrowed when I bit my lip to stifle every telltale noise. _There, see? Not like this. I want to hear everything you have to say. Everything you feel. When we're free. I want you to choose me. _His breath in my ear only made me grind against him. I wanted him so much.

_But what if—what if we actually don't manage—_

_Shut up. Just shut the hell up about that, please. Bella, I swear. _

And so we're waiting. Until we're "free," or so Edward can have this goalpost to motivate him, or some of both.

I mince my way down the stairs, suddenly feeling self-conscious in my tight dress, toward where I know Edward is waiting. Miss Violet has been yipping and fake-snarling since I heard Charlie answer the door, and Edward is growling back at her. I stop and listen because it's sort of adorable. Over her excited panting I hear my dad making small talk.

"Well. Big night. Prom."

"Yes, sir."

"She's all primped and prepped up there. What do you say, do you deserve her?"

Ugh, Charlie and his trick questions. I can hear it in his voice—he thinks he's being cute, putting some hapless guy in the hot seat. He has no idea. It takes a lot worse than this to make Edward break a sweat. He's silent for what feels like a long time.

"I don't do so well with the idea of deserving or not deserving. Sir."

I round the corner silently and fold my arms where Charlie can see me. He looks like a cat getting ready to pounce on a mouse, and he's not about to let me spoil his fun with my dirty looks. Edward's back is a flat plane of black gabardine wool. His head is bent down—he's had a haircut—but he lifts it and looks at Charlie straight-on.

I hear him continue, "You know my guardian, Carlisle? He administers anesthesia at the federal prison hospital. I asked him once if he thinks about what they might have done. The guys on his table. If it ever makes him hesitate. He told me the day he starts to judge who deserves what is the day he tears up his license to practice." I see Charlie studying him. He's not feeling so cute anymore. "His view is . . . his capability to help people heal is a thing he has control over. So he does his human best every day. That makes sense to me, more than a lot of things. So, rather than what I think I deserve, when it comes to your daughter, I guess I think—I hope—she has that sort of capacity in her heart. Deserved, undeserved. She is . . . full of love. Sir."

Charlie is stunned, rightly, and he looks sheepish and mutters, distracting Edward until I can duck out of the doorway and get rid of the tears in my eyes, which he thinks are happy tears.

Edward turns around and stands when he hears me reenter the room, his grin a twisted mess, eyes wide and then crinkling. "Holy . . . um. You look. Hmph." He gives up and shakes his head. He presses his fingers against his lips.

"So do you." I'm surprised to see he's wearing his one prized possession: his father's wristwatch. When we were younger, he used to slip it all the way up past his elbow, playing with the cool titanium weight of it. Today it looks like it was made for him.

Charlie scuttles away to get the camera. Edward's hands are on me immediately. His thumbs trail along my arms. He slips a dainty orchid corsage over my wrist.

"No carnations. As requested." He leans in, whispers in my ear. "You heard all that?"

I nod and relax into his arms. I can feel his warmth, his heart pounding under his new cotton shirt. I hear Charlie snapping away behind me. I hope Edward is smiling.

+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+

The gym is filled with colored light and paper streamers. Rose is here, seated at the same table as us. Ben and Angela, too. There's a slide show of old photos projected on the wall while we eat our dinners of colorless salads and foods stuffed inside other foods. I'm struck by how I actually seem to fit in with my classmates in a lot of these shots—gathered around a cafeteria table, kicking a ball on the soccer field, posing awkwardly with my equally awkward math team buddies. Even Edward appears in a shot from this year, along with his science team and their regional-level trophy in front of a poster of the periodic table.

I wonder if I might one day even tell myself a story of a high school experience that was typical. Could I seal all this other stuff up, lock it away in a bunker with my mom's vinyl and dusty posters, forget all about it?

Edward thinks we can. He's sure of it. I think he's fooling himself as a survival tactic. It's funny . . . ever since this biohazard scheme came to light, we've switched roles; he's become the more optimistic one, so certain we'll turn the tables on Aro, and I've grown more fearful.

He's watching me. He licks his dessert spoon and sets it down. "Dollar for your thoughts?"

"The going rate is a penny."

"Where did you learn to bargain? Because you got screwed."

"If I could truly speak my mind, I'd happily pay _you_."

He raises an eyebrow. He knows as well as I do I can't speak my mind. The best we can do is talk in code.

He scoots his chair back and motions for me to rest my feet in his lap, which I do—gingerly. There's about a four-inch gap between the hem of my dress and the tops of my ankle boots. He covers my visible skin easily with his hands. "So interesting. You sure know how to make a guy wonder."

"You've seen my legs."

"I have. And yet." He edges his fingertips just beneath the fabric's edge. It's just my shin he's stroking, but it's also a promise. His eyes blaze into me.

"What?"

"I can see your pulse racing."

"So?" It's flying, of course.

"So remember this feeling . . . stop second-guessing me." Every slow half-inch he moves his hand up my smooth shin is a punctuation mark. He leans his face close to mine, ever so slowly. "Trust. And believe that we're going to get . . . what . . . we . . . want."

"Two feet on the floor, girls and boys." I look up to see Coach Clapp towering over us.

"Sure thing, Coach." Edward dazzles her with a toothy smile. He stands and pulls me up with him, yanking me out onto the dance floor.

Everybody is taking pictures. Tyler Crowley and Mike Newton make asses of themselves on the dance floor until Jessica and Lauren drag them into dark corners. Edward dances with me. He dances with Rose, who is trying hard to have fun. And we do have fun. Normal fun.

Edward can't stop smiling, and that means neither can I. Even Rose cracks a few genuine-looking smiles, observing us, taking a break from dancing to text Emmett or whoever.

Edward glances over my shoulder at the deejay booth, laughing. We're hearing a weird mash-up of a couple of songs, an old guitar classic and a more recent dance hit. Something about _money, money, money_.

_It's not about the money-money-money._

_Electricity? Biology? Seems to me it's Chemistry. _

_It's not about the money-money-money._

_Seems to me it's Chemistry. Seems to me it's Chemistry._

It's deafening.

"This guy is a nut," he shouts into my ear. "Who plays Rush at a high school prom?"

We start hearing _ch-ching_ sound effects, with swirling gold-coin polka-dot lighting effects to match. Whose idea was this? Jessica's?

"Good grief. A little much, don't you think?"

The strangest expression crosses Edward's face. He stands stock still on the dance floor and gazes at me. He blinks and grins dreamily.

"What is it?"

"Bella . . . of course. Oh God, nothing could be simpler." He puts both hands on my face and kisses me on the mouth.

"I—what?"

"Bella, listen. I mean, come here." He drags me to the punch bowl table and grabs a paper napkin and a marker meant for chaperone nametags. He sketches out a diagram—it's a chain of molecules. The compound he's been synthesizing over and over every night in his basement lab. But this time he adds a squiggly line and a big circle he marks AUNP. I shake my head. All I can think of is _American University of the North Pacific_. There's no such place.

He dunks the napkin into the punch and tosses it, sopping, into the trash. The next thing I know, he's leading me dashing down the hallway as fast as my too-tight dress will allow, both of us ducking out of the view of hallway monitors. He steers us to the library, where we let ourselves in with the skeleton key he carries. He searches out the Renaissance Art section and yanks a handful of books from the shelves.

"What am I looking at?" It's a glossy full-size image of a stained glass window. His finger taps the caption. He's practically jumping up and down while I stoop to read. _Glass produced in the medieval era derives its intense red color from particles of gold chloride suspended in molten glass. The properties of the element change dramatically when in colloidal form. In fact, nanotechnology critical to drug delivery in modern medicine has its roots in the alchemy of medieval artists. _

I drop the book on the floor. The gold. It's not about the _money, money, money_. It's an element, and we need it for the cure. _Chemistry_.

"Oh my God."

The compound, the formula . . . it's correct, but it's not reaching the cells. We need a medium to deliver it—gold nanoparticles, or colloidal gold. Something like that. AUNP: Au, the elemental name for gold, and a chemist's shorthand for nanoparticle.

I look at Edward, and he's nodding his head, grinning from ear to ear. "I can do this."

A surprised sort of laugh bubbles out of my chest. "We're going to get what we want."

Edward pulls me down the hallway once again, his dress shoes slipping on the polished concrete floors, and his legs almost sliding out from under him.

"Shit. Oof."

I rush along beside him, the dull thump of my boots echoing in the empty hallways. My heart is pounding. I'm scared out of my mind, but I'm flying, too. We're really doing this. Edward grins. He feels it, too.

We stop at Edward's locker and he opens the lock. He heaves our gold bar into an old duffle bag. I raise my eyebrows at him. This is where he keeps a $700,000 gold bar? He shrugs, and we keep walking.

In the chem lab, I watch Edward assemble his materials. He could do this in his sleep. He unlocks the solutions cabinet and pulls down nitric and hydrochloric acids in addition to the usual bottles, and citric acid, which will help him break down and restructure our gold into nanoparticles with their antibody-delivering properties. I take notes, preparing a sort of recipe any other biochemist would be able to follow.

We work in silence. It takes ten minutes. Edward grabs Mr. Banner's laser pointer and shines it through the beaker to show me how the beam glows as it passes through the solution, refracted by the nanoparticles. The Tyndall effect. He grins and starts titrating the solution onto some slides.

"Where did you guys go? I'm bored." Our heads jolt up in surprise.

"Rose! Um. We were . . . "

"What the hell? It looks like an episode of _Breaking Bad_ in here. Are you guys secretly dealing meth or something? How did you even get in here?"

Yikes. I scan the lab. At least our gold bar is out of sight.

I hear Aro's sigh in my SatCom. "Big and Phoenix, spot-check status report, please. I was led to understand you are at a school dance tonight."

Edward looks back and forth between Rose and me. He pinches his ear, pseudo-nonchalant, and answers her and Aro simultaneously. "It's not that easy to explain."

I cringe, and sure enough, Aro's voice is in my head again. "Protocol Orange, then. Field debrief. Fifteen minutes to rendezvous. Please."

Edward keeps calm. He murmurs his agreement. "Mmm-hmm."

Rose is looking at us like we have three heads apiece.

I pull our SatCom OverRyde out of Edward's duffle bag, holding it up in plain view. It looks like the remote control for an antiquated T.V. Rose's eyes bug out. I raise my eyebrows at Edward and look pointedly at the clock on the wall, because we have a short amount of time to make some big decisions.

He nods, and I flip the switch. For Rose's benefit, I pretend to be using it as a microphone. "Team Seattle reporting in. Stage five completed. Approaching next clue drop."

I turn to my friend and start ad-libbing. "Rose. I know this looks crazy. But have you ever heard of _Dungeons & Dragons_? Well, we joined a sort of club that's, like . . . just a more intense version of that. With, um, real-world quests."

She nods slowly. Her eyes narrow as she scans the room. "A role playing adventure game."

"Yes! It's . . . super fun. And—well—we don't want to lose points by blowing secrets, so I won't say much more, but I would appreciate it if you don't mention it to anyone."

"Huh. I wouldn't begin to know how."

In the meantime, Edward is racing around mixing and processing chemicals, preparing a series of solutions that he will check against live cultures within his BioSafe canister. He shouts to me, "Tick tock, Swan."

"Do you need Patient Zero to confirm, or just a live culture?"

"Not the patient. Too risky. We can confirm effectiveness when we get to . . . you know. A remote spot."

I dangle Edward's car keys from a finger. Our SatComs have been knocked out for two minutes now, and we need to get her out of earshot before we reactivate. "Hey. Rose. Can you pull Edward's car around back in nine—no, eight—minutes?"

She snags the keys. After a long beat, she nods, turns on her heel, and marches out.

Edward glances at me and pulls something out from behind a row of books on a shelf: his laptop. He turns it on and begins typing.

"I thought you smashed that up."

He winces. "Yeah. Sorry. I need it for one last thing."

He nods to me that he's ready. I take a deep breath and switch the SatComs back on. Aro is barking at us, his voice pitched high and shrill.

"What the devil am I dealing with? Kindly explain the signal malfunction we just experienced."

"We were near a microwave," Edward says.

"Bullshit."

"Well, I don't know what to tell you."

"The truth always works."

"The truth? You don't want to open that door, Aro."

"I beg your pardon?"

"We know more than you think we know. Things that you wouldn't want to get out, and—and we're not exactly motivated to keep it to ourselves."

"Hah! My dear ones, I can't imagine what you think you know. Or where you would go with it." He's laughing, but it's loud in my eardrum. We've rattled him.

"Please. Spare us."

"At any rate, now is hardly the time. I was waiting to tell you until after your little party, but we have new intelligence—these subversives have infiltrated the blood supply, and—"

Edward leaps to his feet.

"Oh, shut up! It's all a lie, Aro! There's no shadowy subversive group. There's no bioterrorist faction spreading this contagion. No one but you."

Shit. No going back now.

I jump in, suddenly scared for Edward so far out on a limb like this. "Don't try to deny it. We know you're keeping a body on life support for no other reason than to experiment with your superflu poison. We saw him, Aro. We . . . we took evidence. And we know where to send it."

"Is that what you saw? You have no idea what you saw. I'm warning you, this will not end in the way that you imagine."

Edward is still juggling solutions and his BioSafe canister. His hands are shaking. I take over arguing with Aro.

"All we imagine is putting an end to this—this genocide. You designed a biological weapon and you're using your security clearance to spread it. You're a traitor to your country—to humanity."

"And not a thought for your colleagues? What of them? This is Jacob's purpose in life. Leah's too. Sam, whom you so admire, is perfectly dependent on Sundial if he ever hopes to see Emily again. And Bree—she has no one. Are you so self-righteous you'd simply pull the plug on them for your quaint ideal?"

"Quaint? Every one of them would side with us if they found out what we know. You're killing everyone over the age of seventy-five! These people are defenseless and innocent!"

"These people are decrepit! They are nothing but a drain on society—nothing to give, nothing to contribute. Barely aware of a world beyond their crackling televisions. Why do you think your school funding keeps shrinking? It's all being sucked up by these . . . barely-alive zombies."

He's probably already mobilized his goons to come and seize us rather than rendezvous peacefully, but we'll part ways with him one way or another. Starting now. It's a weird sensation, knowing your life is changing in a permanent way. Edward is beside me now, one arm around me.

"Go to hell, Aro. This is ending now. This is over. You'll be more alone than you think."

"Alone? And that should worry me? Have you forgotten who I am? What I am capable of?"

"Is that a threat? You've already done your worst."

Aro sighs. "Shame if anything were to happen to that gymnasium full of children. Wiring gets frayed, you know. Fires start all the time in these old buildings."

Fuck. Threatening the school is Aro throwing a gauntlet, and he knows we know it.

Edward turns to me, his jaw tense. He pulls the OverRyde out of his bag and hands it to me, switching the scrambler on for the second time tonight. This time, I won't be turning it off. I shove it into my boot. He sighs.

"We have what we need. Now we just stick to the plan." He motions for me to give him my GPS wristwatch and civilian phone, which he'll destroy so we can't be tracked. I fish them out of my clutch and hand them over.

"This threat of a fire, Edward—" I say. "He might be serious."

"Make a cloud," he says. He presses the skeleton key into my hand. "Use the pool."

I nod. This will ruin prom, but we need to empty the building, and a simple fire alarm won't be enough.

"Do it," he says. He doesn't stop moving, dragging some files from his laptop to a thumb drive and then cracking open the machine with a screwdriver. "I'll fry this stuff under the fume hood, then get going on foot. Once I'm out of range, the OverRyde will stop working for me, but you should be good. I'll try to be careful about ambient noise. Meet me you-know-where in twenty. Go. I mean—wait. Come here."

He waves me back toward him. He drops to his knees in front of me and puts his hands on my thighs. "I'm so sorry to do this. You really do look amazing tonight. It's vintage, isn't it? One of a kind?"

I nod. I steady myself by gripping his shoulders. His hands brace my legs as he gathers the fabric and chops at it with scissors until I'm wearing a mini. "There. Now run."

I race downstairs to the swimmers' locker room below the gym. I find what I need in the janitor's closet, drag the gallon jugs of ammonia to edge of the pool, and stab holes in them with my hairpin before tossing them into the dark water. I hold my shawl up to my mouth as the noxious vapors rise. I pull the fire alarm and let myself out of the building as the sprinklers begin spraying grimy water. I sink to the ground and listen to the alarms wail while I watch my friends—possibly for the last time—pour out of the school's exit doors.


	15. Chapter 15: Mutual Velocity

**AN: **Thanks again for reading! Many thanks to **happymelt** for beta-ing, **faireyfan** for prereading, and **midsouthmama** (prereader emeritus) for being awesome.**  
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**Chapter 15: Mutual Velocity**

In the chaos of the evacuation, I'm invisible. As students pour out of the building in their formalwear, I hear some of them hooting _seniors!_ and cheering what they think was a class prank. Others are on their mobiles giving assurances to parents, and then exchanging details with one another about after-parties. Firemen verify that the halls are clear. A line of emergency vehicles fills the street in front of the school, but there's nothing for them to do. I lurk out of reach of the automatic floodlights, keeping an eye out for thugs sent by Aro.

I send a text to Charlie reassuring him. I know he's working a northern route tonight, but he listens to the all-city scanner sometimes.

"What the fuck happened to your dress?"

I spin around and see Rose, Edward's keys in her fist. "It's a long story. All right if I fill you in later?" I reach for the keys, blinking away tears. I wasn't ready for this—saying goodbye without saying goodbye. I can see Edward's car standing near the school's loading dock, hazards flashing.

But she pulls her hand away. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, you know. Just tired. Too much excitement for one night," I say. "As soon as I meet Edward at the next clue drop, I'm ready for sleep."

"The clue drop, huh?" She hands over the keys. She gives me a look that says she's not convinced, but she's humoring me. "Call me tomorrow."

+x+x+x+x+x+x+

I race toward Volunteer Park, where the plan calls for me to meet Edward in a certain grove of trees. Many of the city's underground tunnels converge there, including abandoned drainage tunnels that connect to the emergency escape routes from both of our homes.

I weave through residential streets and check my mirror frantically. No one is following me. I must have slipped out just a few minutes ahead of Aro's people.

Edward will be fine getting here on foot or, more likely, on a stolen dirt bike. After the city drained the reservoir at Volunteer Park last month, citing health concerns, it made even more shortcuts available to us. I imagine him under the earth, speeding past graffiti-covered walls, checking the gleaming watch on his wrist.

My tunnel to home tempts me, its entrance hidden in the bushes a few hundred yards from where I'm parked under a drooping tree branch. We have a pack stashed in the woods nearby, so I could theoretically skip the trip home, but what I really need to do is leave a note for Charlie, to try to lessen the chances he'd do something rash. I calculate the risk involved.

The house is being watched, though. I'm sure of it. I decide the odds are good that they're not _inside _the house, at least; I can just slip in and out through the sub-basement. I'll give myself one minute at the latched entrance. If I can't break in, I'll abort, but I at least need to try. I ditch my sparkly clutch bag under the driver's seat of the car. I'm about to lock the doors when I remember we'll never need this car again; in fact, if the car gets stolen it can only help us by diverting any trackers. I leave the keys on the seat and the doors unlocked. I make sure the OverRyde is secure in my boot and make a dash for it.

I skin my knee scrambling down the dark hatch into my tunnel. I grab the headlamp I stowed on a nail on the earth wall after our test run last week and start picking my way around muddy piles of debris. I have eight minutes to get there and back, then out of the city on whatever combination of motorcycles and jet skis Edward sees fit to "borrow."

More than once, I instinctively reach for my earlobe, wanting to report in with Edward, wanting to hear his voice. Without my phone, I can't even text him, normal person-style, to say I might be late. _I won't be late_, I tell myself.

In no time, I've made it through to the sub-basement room and up the rickety ladder and am looking at the hatch door in front of me. It budges when I rattle it, but only barely. The heavy bolt holds. I take my hairpin out and wiggle that through the sliver of space, nudging. This is taking too long. I move to wipe my brow; the elastic ribbon of my wrist corsage is not very absorbent.

Suddenly, I hear Miss Violet squeaking and sniffling up above. She hears me.

"Come on girl! Yeah, you found me!" She can definitely paw the area rugs aside. I wonder if she's strong enough to nose the deadbolt open. I begin to hear her whine excitedly. "You can do it!"

By some miracle, the combination of my hairpin and her snout gets the door unlatched, and I heave it open and climb out, scooping her up and shushing her as my eyes scan the basement. I snap my headlamp off.

Upstairs, I toss a few things into a bag—more for the sake of appearances than anything. A favorite T-shirt, the framed picture of my mom.

I scribble a hasty note on a pad on Charlie's dresser. _Dad, I'm sorry there wasn't time to explain. Edward needs to be moved and I'm going with him. It's complicated—because of his history. I love him, Dad. I love you, too. Please know that I'm safe where we're going, and happy. Carlisle and Esme will explain. Please take care of Miss V._

I pause for a split second to review variables. Carlisle and Esme's training will ensure they cover for us with him, even if they have to make something up on the spot. It's not in Sundial's interest to complicate matters further by contradicting that, as long as they believe Charlie can't help them find me. Which is true. He'll search, of course. I know he will. But he won't ever find us. Not until it's safe.

Never mind—I can't think about that. It's time to go.

One last thing sends me back into Charlie's room. Wherever we end up, we'll be totally cut off—no Volturi earnings, nothing. Just the clothes on our backs and the getaway bag we've got stashed in a tree in Volunteer Park. When we liquidate our gold bar, we'll be set. Even with a few shavings scraped off of it for our nanoparticle synthesis work, it'll be worth a lot on the black market. Until then, we have a few grand to work with, mostly in Euros and Canadian currency. I recall something Charlie said once about cash in his dresser drawer, and sure enough, there's a bunch of bills stuffed into an envelope marked BELLA JUST IN CASE. It's about three hundred dollars.

And I see something else: his service revolver. Well, hell. I'm already doing the worst possible thing by leaving him. It would take me twenty seconds to pick the trigger lock and load the weapon. But in the end, I decide it would only raise Charlie's alarm, or leave him defenseless if anyone came after him.

Again, more things I can't think about. I make myself deaf to Miss Violet's paws clicking happily on the hardwood floors. I loop her leash around the bannister so she can't give away my whereabouts so easily and make my way down, through, and out. The last thing I do is pack some earth against the paneling separating the bunker from my tunnel. When I detonate it later to block the path, debris won't breach the barrier.

+x+x+x+x+

I'm so eager to see Edward. One thing fills my mind, and it's him. I wish I could say the cure mattered more—all those people. But I'm stressed out, and my mind wants to do a very simple calculus. No Charlie, no Alice and Rose, no thousands of faceless people can figure in. Just him.

When I scramble out of the cluster of bushes that disguise my exit route, I think of him and light the fuse that will gently implode the tunnel. One by one, I'm checking off the steps in our memorized plan. Next: I scan the trees for Edward and a couple of BMX bikes or a motorcycle.

I switch my headlamp off as I march through the sparse grove. The moon is big, and there's plenty of light tonight.

I don't even need it. I hear his soft laughter coming from a few yards away. "Over here, Swan."

I turn toward his voice and feel my pulse start to calm down. His white tuxedo shirt glows in the moonlight and brightens his face. His smile widens. He has our pack on his shoulders. I start moving toward him with long strides, but when I see his head jerk to the right I realize I've heard it, too—the sound of a twig snapping. Just one twig. A lot of twigs snapping could be an animal, but one twig means stealth, and stealth means danger.

"No! Get down, Edward! Snipers!"

I hear more shouting—his voice, other voices—and the crack of gunshots, then the sounds of grunts and a heavy thump. I discover I've closed the distance, and I have him in my arms, but he won't be still.

"Where are you hit?" We're wrestling in the dry leaves until I realize he's trying to cover me with his body. I will myself to go slack and look up to see him pressing his blowgun binoculars to his eyes.

"I'm not. Down, damn it. They aren't done yet."

"Night vision?"

"Yeah." I hear the whistle of a dart ejecting from his blowgun—once, twice—then a sigh of relief. "Got 'em. All clear." He continues peering through the lenses.

The woods are silent for a moment, then we both hear a whimpering noise that turns into a voice I recognize, shouting in agitation.

"Oh, I don't believe this," Edward says, turning his lenses toward the noise.

"That sounds like Rose. Did you shoot Rose?"

"No."

We scramble to our feet and race toward her.

A few yards beyond where two goons are slumped in a heap, Rose is trying to lift Emmett in her arms. His EMT uniform pants are soaked with blood. "Rose! What on Earth?" I follow her glance to the street that borders Volunteer Park, where an ambulance is parked beside Edward's car, the back doors wide open.

"Help me get him in there. He's, um . . . shot. He, like, jumped in front of this crazy guy with a gun."

"I'm okay," Emmett says. He blinks rapidly. "I'll be okay."

"Ah, Christ." Edward stoops next to Emmett and lifts his torso. "Can you each get a leg? Quickly."

He scans our surroundings with his eagle eyes. "Emmett's partner?"

Rose shakes her head. "Went home after the alarm cleared. Shift's over."

The goons are out for the count, but who knows if there are more still to come? We shuffle the few yards and heave Emmett into the ambulance. I slam the doors shut behind all of us. I'm almost blind with rage, knowing my friends have been touched by this senselessness. But I can't even pause to process it. We're too close.

"This needs a tourniquet." Edward reaches a hand under his suit coat, and his face falls when he remembers he's wearing his tux. No belt.

"Hey." I wave my hand in front of his eyes. "Focus. This is an ambulance. They have something better for that."

"Right. Habit."

I follow Emmett's glance to locate the bin that holds elastic hose, which I tie around his thigh.

Rose has her knuckles pressed to her lips. "This is my fault," she says, "because I can't mind my own business. I got him to follow you. I hid my iPhone in Edward's glove box so we could . . . and . . . your keys were just lying there, and you were nowhere . . ."

I know Rose, and she needs a task. "Rose. We have to get him to some help. I can't explain now, but calling it in is not an option. Do you know how to drive this thing?"

"What? I guess so. Maybe. It's, like, a van, right?"

"Exactly. Nothing to it."

Emmett lifts his hip up, his face shining with sweat, so she can fish his keys out of his pocket. He manages a weak smile for her. "You got this. Easy."

She scrambles up to the front, gets behind the wheel, and puts the ambulance in gear. Before she pulls away, she steals a glance out the window. "Are those guys dead? We can't just leave them there."

Edward looks at me, his brow heavy. "Um, no. They're just knocked out." He turns his attention back to Emmett, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around his arm and then uncapping a syringe with his teeth. His voice is calm and cool when he asks Emmett if he has any allergies to morphine. This is more serious than they're letting on, then.

I take a deep breath. "Rose, trust me. We need to move. Now."

She pulls out of the lot, and her face is stony, the way she only looks when she's putting her whole focus into a task. "Who are they, drug dealers? Are you really a narc? What's happening back there, is he okay?"

"Just stopping the bleeding, monitoring vitals. Look, his color is coming back. He's gonna be fine. And no, I'm not a narc."

Emmett winks at Rose, who keeps peering back at him. He whispers in a weak voice, "He knows what he's talking about. Eyes on the road, babe."

I've been gesturing to Rose to show her where to drive. I have a destination in mind, but I'm afraid to say it out loud.

I look at Edward, and he nods. He's thinking what I'm thinking. He looks back and forth between Emmett and me. "The less you know about those men, the better. Listen, we can get you help. But we have to keep it under the radar, understand? Does this bus have GPS? What did you use to follow Rose's phone?"

"The console computer." Emmett gasps.

Edward scrambles up to the passenger seat and wastes no time tearing the computer from its bracket. He tosses it out the window. Emmett doesn't have the strength to do much more than frown.

"Walkie-talkies? How do you get dispatch to hear you?"

"This." Emmett tilts his head to indicate the radio clipped to his shoulder. It's the kind that only transmits when you press the orange button.

"What about this EKG? Does it do wireless data transmits?"

"Only if I ask it to."

"Okay. Rose, can I see that phone of yours?"

Rose hands it over, her face ashen. Edward takes it from her and snaps on the sirens and lights, gesturing silently for her to speed toward the gaps that open up in the road ahead.

Edward will chuck this out the window, too, along with Emmett's phone. But first, he taps in a number, and we all wait while it connects. "Carlisle. I need your help."

+x+x+x+x+x+x+


	16. Real Numbers

**AN: **Hi and thanks for reading!** Happymelt** and** faireyfan** helped enormously with this chapter, pointing out grammar issues and clarity disconnects, and while**midsouthmama** has been busy with real life stuff, she has been our spirit guide (though she may not realize it).

**Chapter 16: Real Numbers **

The federal prison hospital doesn't exactly have a lobby. Rose sits with me in the empty warden's office while Edward assists Carlisle with his middle-of-the-night stitch-up procedure. The ambulance, at least, allowed us to evade any additional followers. We seem to have shaken Aro's people—for now.

While I can't admit this to Rose or Emmett, a major advantage of this spot is that we can isolate them and clean things up—them, the ambulance, their stories. It's ironic that one of the most watched places in the country is the safest for us to do clandestine business. All the suspicion is reserved for the inmate patients, and no one can spare a damn about a few teenagers in bloodstained formalwear.

We can count on Carlisle to sell the witness protection angle to our families, even though he's beginning to doubt it himself. The ambulance is a charred crisp by now, next to a salvage yard near the airport. And it's my job to assure Rose that the best way to help me is to keep her head down.

"He's going to be okay, Rose. A couple of weeks of strengthening and he'll be good as new. Carlisle's people have already placed a cover story with his boss."

"About the ambulance getting hijacked. I know." She picks at a frayed string on the greenish-gray scrubs that have taken the place of her bloody prom dress. "_Carlisle's people_? Listen to you."

"I'm sorry you got mixed up in any of this."

She purses her lips. "I never imagined a couple of thugs were hunting you down. I should have left you alone."

I frown. "It's not your fault. The whole point of a Witness Protection Program is to keep things like this from happening." I wish I could tell her the truth, but almost anything I say will put her in danger. "What made you decide to follow me?"

"I just had a feeling something weird was going on with you. Bella . . . live-action _Dungeons and Dragons_ on prom night? The way he looked? I don't think so."

I don't protest. "You know I would have told you if there was any possible way, right?"

She pushes her hair out of her eyes and looks at me sideways. "Are you in trouble?"

"Maybe. No." I realize I actually mean it. I sit up taller and grasp her hand. "I mean, I was, but what Emmett did—I think he saved Edward's life. That was the worst of it, so . . . I'm not in trouble anymore. Neither of us is."

She nods.

"I just need to take care of one last thing. If you don't see me for a while, take it as a good sign. Okay?"

She grimaces and shrugs. "I don't have much choice, do I?"

+x+x+x+x+x+

Once Carlisle is done patching Emmett up, he sits with Edward and me in his office. A row of glowing monitors lines one wall, showing him the vital signs of patients who have undergone surgery in recent days.

"Bella, it appears Edward has come clean to you about his Witness Protection situation," he says. "Protocol dictates your friends will be given discharge papers stating King County General treated them, a cover story that explains things—that they were taken hostage by drug-seeking ambulance thieves, in this case—and protective watch detail for at least the next several days. I have a way of inducing amnesia, if you think that's necessary."

"No," I say. "The idea that the mob is after Edward is enough to keep Rose quiet. And judging from his behavior in the ambulance, Emmett isn't looking to stir up trouble. He exhibited classic social equilibrium-seeking responses."

Edward clears his throat. "We've been studying crisis psychology," he adds. He shoots me a look. "You know. At school."

"Well. That's good." Carlisle spins a pen between his fingers. "I'm owed a great number of favors here, so you have nothing to worry about on this end, or I'd never have said yes to your call. But speaking of cover stories, here's the thing. My assignment is to uphold yours, Edward, no questions asked. As far as anyone else knows, you're in my care, and Esme's, as a foster son. Usually we're briefed about threats that would require overnights away from home, that sort of thing. But now this—and we haven't heard a word."

This means he hasn't contacted mainstream Volturi headquarters. He's already out on a limb for us, and he's letting us know.

Carlisle continues, "If this is going where I think it is—if Esme and I let a protected witness slip away—both of our careers go up in smoke."

"We know that. That's why we need to be the ones to break protocol." Edward takes a deep breath and wipes his palms on his knees. He glances around the room, peering at the light fixtures and shady corners.

"The room is clean," Carlisle says. "Any surveillance measures we do have in our measly budget are directed at the inmates."

Edward takes a deep breath. "I'm not a protected witness. Neither is Bella. We're both part of a more . . . active clandestine arrangement."

Carlisle sighs heavily.

Edward glances at me, waiting. I can see how heavy this is for him, and I know how long he's wanted to be free of it. I nod, and he goes on. "Would it mean anything to you if I said the word . . . Sundial?"

Carlisle presses his hands together and leans forward. His head bows down. "Son of a bitch. They decommissioned that program in the nineties."

Edward stares at his own hands. I hear a decade of regret coloring his one-syllable answer. "No."

The sound of Carlisle's agitated breathing fills the room. "There have been rumors. In fact, just tonight a young girl was using ten-codes on the all-agents wire. A rogue signal, as it turns out. But I never seriously thought . . . at any rate, you need out? That's what this is?"

"It's a bit more delicate. The less you know the better, but—"

"Who is after you?"

I look at Edward. He pulls yesterday's newspaper from the top of Carlisle's recycling bin pile and points to the front-page headline. It's a variation on the previous day's headline, and the day before that. "These people."

Carlisle raises his eyebrows. "Six thousand elderly Floridians?"

"The people who made the thing that's making them sick—it's a contagion, but not a natural one. It's a bioweapon specifically designed to target older people," Edward says.

Carlisle looks at him, his expression fierce. "That's quite a serious allegation. Two of our inmates have confirmed cases. Three more are on watch."

Edward turns toward me and stares pointedly. His knee starts bouncing. I glare at him. I know what he's thinking: a chance to get definitive confirmation of the cure. But this was not part of our plan. It would mean tipping our hand about having the cure, and to the wrong audiences—no place is more full of informants than a prison. It would also put Carlisle under a microscope.

I shake my head and watch Edward clench his jaw.

"What's the prognosis?"

"The CDC advises typical incubation is nine days. I'd say, for the most advanced case, we're looking at six more days before he's in ICU."

Edward's face relaxes the slightest amount. It's early Sunday morning right now; assuming our FedEx to the Centers for Disease Control goes out in Monday's first pick-up, that's enough time. "Without saying more, I can tell you we have evidence that implicates this person, and he's aware of it, so it means we need to get far away, and fast."

"And I presume there's a reason you can't pursue this through your normal channels? Sundial channels?" Carlisle asks.

Edward stares at the ground, evaluating. I reach across the gap between our two chairs and grasp his hand. It's tempting to spill the beans now, to tell Carlisle everything, but we both know it's safest to keep the circle tight and be far away from this place before the story blows up.

Finally, he nods. "There's a reason. The worst reason."

A look passes between them, something so full of anguish it makes me realize Edward hasn't been quite as fatherless as he thinks.

Carlisle rummages in a box for a set of keys, which he tosses to me. "You'll find a Honda 50R under a tarp beyond the exercise yard. Unregistered, so don't get pulled over. Helmets are chained to the bike. Use them. As far as the job goes, my story is I got nervous and put you under deep cover. Agent's prerogative."

"But the timing—it's too coincidental," Edward says.

"Let that be my problem. At a pier about five miles north of here is a lot where the police department holds recovered property. Watercraft included."

My shoulders relax the tiniest bit. A boat would put us back on track with our plan.

"I can offer you a thing called GoDoze to knock out the guard dogs—"

"Uh, thanks. We're covered."

"Contingency cash?"

Edward shakes his head. "We're good."

"Do you want scrubs? Something clean to wear?"

"No. If we get caught, it would lead back to you."

Edward has stuffed his jacket and tie into our pack, but he's still in his tuxedo pants and shirt, a burgundy handprint marring the starched placket. His undershirt peeks out where the top few buttons are undone. I've got just a few smears of blood on my dress, and my T-shirt from home covers them.

"Your father," he says, looking at me. "He won't rest easy. I'll do my best to appease him, but I want you to promise me you'll contact him the moment you see evidence the danger has passed."

I nod. That moment feels so far away. I can't think about such things without feeling that an avalanche of impossible hopes could bury me, but I agree. "Of course."

He turns to Edward. "The same goes for you. Be careful."

They shake hands. "Tell Esme I—. I wish—. I mean, I'll see her again," Edward says. Then there's the sort of shoulder clap that turns into a man-hug that lasts a while. I step into the hall.

Carlisle commandeers a security van to drive us to the exit near the exercise yard. We're almost there when I put my hand on his shoulder, remembering one last thing. Carlisle and Edward look at me, waiting. What I'm about to say turns my stomach, but I swallow bile and do it, because the alternative is infinitely worse. I can't go on with this microphone installed in my mouth, in constant fear of the SatCom OverRyde running out of batteries.

"I don't suppose you have anybody who owes you a favor who can remove a couple of temporary crowns? A sort of . . . prison dentist?"

+x+x+x+x+x+x+

Crammed between Edward and me on the motorcycle is our getaway backpack with its precious cargo: three slim FedEx packages we hand-addressed weeks ago and prepaid with a burner debit card, and that have since been lying in wait until we cracked the cure. One contains everything the CDC will need to understand, verify, and initiate the manufacture of what we've discovered. The cure. The second goes to the man who signs off on Aro's budgets, and it details purchasing irregularities we think will get their attention, even if ethical lapses don't. The last one goes to a "shade dump" in New Orleans—a café that collects packages from deep cover sources for a London journalist. He's someone less likely to be under the thumb of our government—just in case.

Edward pulls up to a box outside of a bland office park, and I drop the packages into the slot.

He shouts over his shoulder as we begin to roll away again, his voice muffled by his helmet. "When's first pickup?"

"Monday at eight." Normally, we'd page an all-hours courier, but those resources will never be ours to use again.

He nods. The sky is more indigo than black right now. In an hour, we'll be looking at lavender-blue. By the time things turn dusty pink, we need to be far away from shore.

+x+x+x+x+x+x+

The impound lot is just as Carlisle described. Two Dobermans prowl behind a fence rimmed with barbed wire. Near the entry gate, the red pinpoints of cameras glow in the pre-dawn haze—at least, until Edward takes them out with a few well-placed spitballs from his blowdart gun.

"That was impressive," I say, when he nails the third and final camera square in the center of its metal bracket in one try.

"I'll tell you a secret," he says, glancing at me. "My patented spitball recipe. Are you ready to get your mind blown?"

I grin. "Always."

He folds up his blowdart kit and slips it back into our pack. "Newsprint, obviously. It's stickiest. And birdseed. That way they get to the evidence before anyone's the wiser."

"Genius." I nod. "Poor birdies, though. Gross."

"Indeed."

"Thanks for sharing. I feel like I'm really in your inner circle now."

"It's very exclusive. You're the only member, in fact."

While we talk, Edward helps me tear the long stretchy sleeves of my dress off at the shoulder seams. We tie them around our faces to filter out the GoDoze before I split a packet open and toss it near the dogs. He boosts me to stand on his shoulders, and I drape his suit coat over the loop of wire at the top of the fence.

"I think this is the end of your new tux," I say. "It suited you."

"Now we're even." I feel his hand wrap around my bare ankle, just above the edge of my boot. "You can buy me a new one."

A stroke from his thumb tells me to shift all of my weight onto that leg so he can raise me higher with both hands. We've done this before. I always feel like the world's most inelegant circus performer.

"And you can buy me a new dress." His arms tremble beneath me, but just for a moment, and then I am up and over, bringing his torn and frayed jacket down with me. I let him in through the iron-bolted gate.

I help myself to a red plastic container of fuel. Edward scans the manifest for descriptions of the vehicles, and we select a midsized speedboat without structural or mechanical damage. It's as easy as that. There's even a set of keys attached to a squishy floater key ring.

As we make our way to the end of the dock, Edward ransacks a large touring boat and comes out with two wetsuits that look like they might fit us. Snorkeling gear dangles from his hooked fingers.

"Overkill much? Life vests would probably do."

"Not at these temps. I did some research. Just humor me, okay?"

He tosses everything into the cabin of the boat and dips his hand into the water as we board. After I've settled into the cockpit, he leans in close to me. "I've been wanting to do this for hours. You have smears of dirt."

"I do?"

"Just a little."

"Oh. Gross."

He brushes his fingertips across my cheekbones and forehead. I expect my jaw to feel tender where my SatCom microphone was removed, but it's not that bad. Edward is extra gentle.

"Do I have a bruise from the dentist?"

"Nope. Just dirt. I think it's from when I pulled you down in the woods."

He frowns. He's moved on from tidying me up and is just cupping the side of my face. "I should be pissed at you for going off-book back there. Your little detour to the house? But it probably saved your life."

"I was within our time constraints. I couldn't just leave Charlie like that. He'd have put himself in danger."

He bites the inside of his cheek. His heavy veil of distress is back; I never know what prompts it.

"The kid Carlisle heard on the wire—Bree, do you think?"

Ah. Of course—thinking of Bree always makes him torment himself. "They must have moved off the SatComs to keep the rest of Sundial from clueing in. That's why we haven't heard a peep."

"When these batteries drain, it's going to ping them." He strokes my earlobe. The charger was in our molar caps, so it's only a matter of time before the signals in our subcutaneous transponders die.

"Good. Let Aro explain that. He'll say we're dead before he admits we got away."

Edward cringes. He moves his hand down to the side of my neck.

"My God. I can talk to you now. And . . . everything. This is really happening."

I cover his hand with mine and lean in closer. When our lips meet, I can feel him trembling. This kiss feels different. Enough so that I don't want to wait another second for what's coming—for the next part of our lives.

I break away. "Edward, we gotta go. Now."

"I guess so." He cracks a faint grin and starts the engine at a slow idle. "Final gear check?"

"Passports, identity papers, foreign cash, regular cash, gold, compass, survival basics. Everything's sealed up and watertight. Wetsuits. Good to go."

We putter away from the dock and up through the Sound. When we hit the ocean, we'll be able to really open it up.

+x+x+x+x+x+x+

After we're a good distance away from the Sound, Edward drops anchor and sits next to me on a padded bench in the stern. He bends to retrieve the SatCom OverRyde from my boot.

"I guess we don't need this anymore," he says.

"I guess we'll never need it again."

He dangles it over the water, and when I nod, we both watch it disappear into the murky depths. It sends a thrill down my spine.

"We're just a couple of kids on a boat, now," I say. "Does it feel weird?"

"No." He touches the skin behind his ear, where our listening transponders will remain buried and silent until we can locate a surgeon. "Or . . . yes." He shrugs.

"Are you sad it's over?"

He frowns and waits for me to continue.

"You never got to parachute out of a helicopter. Or ride on top of an elevator."

He smirks. "You don't know everything about me, you know."

"Maybe not. And now you have no excuse. You can tell me everything."

"I'll tell you this one thing, actually." He takes my hand and presses it against his sternum, holding it there. "I'm going to miss the way you look at me."

"What do you mean? I won't stop looking at you. I mean—I don't—" I'm flustered and I can feel my face heating.

"Not like that." He tucks hair behind my ear and strokes the side of my face. "I mean the way we used to need to do it. To communicate. You have a thousand ways of saying a thing without using words."

"Oh." I think back to all the different looks I can remember him giving me—across a crowded room, or when we were alone-but-not-alone together. They flash through my memory like a slide show. Every time I can remember, there's been a split second where my heart stilled while I interpreted his meaning, before I knew I'd nailed it. Did it feel that way for him? "Yeah."

I slide my hand up past his collarbones until all I feel is the skin of his throat, warm in the sun, peppered with stubble. I don't know exactly where his voice comes from inside there, which muscles and tendons make it sound the way it does, but I think about all the times I'll hear it throughout the rest of my life, and my heart doesn't stand still—it swells to bursting in my chest. "We'll make do, Edward."

I slip my arm through his and rest my head on his shoulder, breathing in a scent that seems more flesh and blood, more real-live-boy, every moment. I feel his strong hand smooth my hair at the back of my head and savor the satisfied sounds that bubble out of his chest.

We pull anchor, put the boat back in gear, and start moving again. For hour after hour on the water, we talk and talk. We both shout to be heard above the hum of the motor, and it feels good. He says silly things to me, which is important. _I like your hair messy like that. I like it long. I don't think you'll need to cut it. Give me a few days with it, at least? We should get a place on the beach. Learn to surf._ I steep in the sound of my own voice answering him. I love that I never have to bite my tongue again. _You have a ways to go on swimming first. But yeah, we should._ _Maybe you can grow a beard. At least, until everything comes to light and the heat is off._ He grins openly. _I'm so proud of you, Edward. We did it. Home stretch._

I find sunscreen under a seat cushion and slather it on. We nibble on protein bars and scan the water for followers, finding none. Only a half-dozen pleasure boats idling to the south and a few slow barges. The sun dips into the horizon to the west. Along the north end of Vancouver Island, Edward tips his head toward the CB scanner. His brow crinkles, and then he slows the engine down.

"What is it?"

"There's an APB out for this boat. Just a matter of time before the fuzz comes looking."

"Time for our disappearing act?"

"No time like the present."

I stand up and start rummaging for our wetsuits. Showtime. "I love that you're a contingency planner."

He cocks an eyebrow and starts peeling off his T-shirt. "Stick with me, kid."

He isn't bashful about changing in front of me, but I make him turn away as I tug my suit on. I test the flashlights on both of our snorkeling masks. I stow our Mylar-sealed identity papers inside my wetsuit while he does the same with our survival essentials and valuables. He ties a grappling hook around his waist. The gold bar is secure in a mesh specimen bag hanging from his shoulders like a backpack. I scatter our clothes around so that, when the empty boat is found, it will look like we went for a dip and vanished.

"We're in the shipping channel, right? Good traffic?" We're a few hundred yards from the nearest shore, but it doesn't even matter. These suits should allow us to hang out for hours. Edward in his wetsuit makes me grin.

"A barge will pass us within the hour. Let's get the hell off this ghost ship."

He switches the boat to run on autopilot at a slow speed. That and the current will take it far away from us. He takes my hand and we leap over the side, hand in hand.

Saltwater fills my mouth, shockingly cold. It soaks my buoyant wetsuit, and I kick my legs to get the blood flowing, knowing my body heat will warm up the suit within seconds. We doggie paddle a few yards and watch the driverless boat glide away from us toward where the darkening sky glows purple.

"Uh, Bella?" Edward says.

I turn to face him and feel my skin go warm, prickling with alarm. His chin is tipped up, barely above the water, and I can see his arms paddling fast under the surface.

His voice is quiet and unnaturally calm. "I think I made a mistake."

+x+x+x+x+


	17. Absolute Value

**AN: **Many thanks to beta and prereader** happymelt** and** faireyfan**, and to spirit guide** midsouthmama. **And thanks to you for reading!

**Chapter 17: Absolute Values **

"Talk to me. What's wrong?"

Even as I insist on hearing him say it, I know his answer. I wrap my arms around his torso, and his weight comes as a shock. I churn my legs like mad.

"I . . . miscalculated. This wetsuit, it should be—I thought—but I forgot how heavy I'd be with the gold."

"I could have thought of it, too, you know. And I didn't."

I chew my lip. Since when did we get so careless? Cracking the cure was supposed to be the hard part. Evading Aro was supposed to be the dangerous part. I see Edward scan the distance.

"Anything?"

"There was a barge on the horizon headed our way. I could see it from the speedboat, but I can't see it now." He squints.

"How fast do barges travel?"

"Eight or ten miles per hour, I guess." He shrugs and spits seawater. "But I don't know how far away it might be."

"Okay, this is simple." I take the opportunity to distract him. "The horizon is always 1.22 miles times the square root of a given vantage point's height, measured in feet. Give or take some for atmospheric distortion."

"For real?"

"You standing in the speedboat would have had you at about ten feet above sea level, so . . ."

"Square root of ten . . . that's three something. Times 1.22 . . . it's almost four miles away." His mouth twists into a grimace. "Half an hour? We can hack that. Maybe."

I slow my breathing to try to stay calm. With this weight dragging us down, that's too long. "Plus submerging ourselves while they pass and then sneaking aboard? We haven't slept in two days. Time to improvise a new plan."

His face turns stony. I watch his jaw muscles work beneath his skin. "We drop the gold, there goes our bargaining chip with the barge crew. What if they're hostile like in Panama three years ago?"

"We'll swim for shore instead."

He glances at the shore, assessing it. "I had it all worked out, my buoyancy in salt water versus fresh water. I forgot the most basic thing."

"Well, you need to get over it," I say. "Real life is not a word problem. You can turn a constant into a variable. And that's what we'll do."

His gaze locks on mine, wary.

"You sure about that? Because right now I feel like _I'm_ the most unreliable fucking variable you ever tied your fate to. You really want to trade my life for three million dollars?"

I scoff out loud. This sort of thing coming from him shouldn't surprise me, but everything about it is ridiculous. "How do you figure? This thing is worth three-quarters of a million, at most. "

"It's more than a precious metal now. It's a key ingredient in curing a pandemic. Speaking of variables . . . this one is about to skyrocket."

"Nope. Edward, three minutes ago it turned into a worthless brick of dead weight, and we're getting rid of it."

His eyes pinch closed, but only for a split second. I barely register it before his face is stoic again, nodding, pale. "Right. Okay. Are you sure? You're sure. I know."

"Twenty-seven pounds. That's all it is. Just dead weight."

"Dead weight. Yeah. I know."

"Quickly, before one of us gets a cramp."

"Can you reach it?" He doesn't want to let go of me to let the straps fall. "The zipper is on my right. Your left. Don't knee me in the nuts."

I circle him closer with my arms and grope for the closure. When I pull the gold bar out and lift it up, it glimmers in the moonlight. We thought this was our future waiting to be let loose, but it's not.

"Wait," he says, "maybe it's not that dire—"

"It is that dire. We'll drown, Edward."

"But . . ."

"But what? We can get more money. Enough to live. The two of us." I really am getting tired, so I press myself closer to him, resting the gold bar on his chest between us. He tightens one arm around my waist and uses the other to continue treading water.

"That's enough for you?"

I frown. The difference between the cold metal in one hand and the skin of his neck against my cheek is everything to me. "No question."

"Then . . . okay." He takes a deep, shivering breath.

"Give it a kiss goodbye or something, if that's what you need."

He shakes his head and pushes the thing out of my hand. It tumbles into the deep—I know it must, because I feel lighter instantly.

"Oh, Bella." He wraps both arms around me, no longer desperately treading water. I feel rather than hear him whispering _sorry_ into my neck.

+x+x+x+x+x+

The rest of our escape comes off without a hitch. Edward points us toward an area of shore where flattened grass suggests a canoeing access point, which means a campground might be nearby. Without the extra weight, we make our way there slowly but easily. Just because we know how to do things like board a moving vessel undetected doesn't mean we need to keep doing those things, I remind myself. Edward lets the unnecessary grappling hook fall away from his waist, and we toss our snorkeling gear after it as soon as we're on solid ground.

We pick our way through the forest, treading carefully in our bare feet, until we find a footpath. We follow it to a youth group camp. Edward keeps his eye on the canteen building, where a late-night sing-a-long is underway, while I raid the laundry room for clean, dry shirts and jeans, flip-flops, and a backpack. For a moment I marvel that we find clothing that fits us among these campers' things, and then I realize: we're probably the same age.

From there we hitchhike to Port Hardy, where we pay a pilot in crumpled Euros for an illegal perch on the floor of his cargo plane to Calgary, and in Calgary we spend a lot of our remaining cash on one-way tickets to Maui, plus some more inconspicuous travel clothes. We sail through customs with our new identity papers and stumble into a hotel close to the shore—a place I'm sure might be charming in the light of day. As it is, I'm dead on my feet, too tired to register anything but the mattress under me and Edward beside me. I sleep like a rock.

I guess that it's mid-morning when I blink awake and look around to get my bearings. Edward is on the private patio next to a blue plunge pool, playing solitaire or something. I can see his hands moving, arranging piles methodically. He looks moody and nervous; I imagine this will pass over time.

"When did you get up?"

He looks up at the sound of my voice. A tight, joyless smile appears on his face. "Hey. Just getting this out of the way."

I pull a hotel robe on over my T-shirt and shuffle out to join him. I was wrong—he's not sorting cards. He's sorting stacks of money. "What's going on? Where did you get so much cash?"

"Oh . . . I just thought I might as well. It's just so much simpler when things are liquid."

"But what do you even—oh, shit. Did you sell your father's watch? Edward! We can get it back. We don't need any of this! We can find jobs. What's the rush?"

"I did it at that clothes shop in the Calgary airport. A Japanese businessman was admiring it while you were in the changing room."

He doesn't elaborate. My blood starts to boil when I realize what he's doing.

"Two stacks? Edward, what is this?"

"Bella, just hear me out. Hear me out."

"No. No, no, no. You are not doing this to me. Not after everything." I press my palms to my temples. Why did I not see this coming? "You said we would get what we wanted, and we're getting it. We're getting it."

"Bella, will you listen to me, please?" His voice is cracking. "Will you just listen? This is something we have to actually be sure about."

I fold my arms. I wonder how long he's been planning this speech.

"You're free now. There's nothing to make you stay anymore, so I can't ask you to. Not after how I let you down."

I just stare at him. If I could make steam come out of my ears, I would. "This is what you've been keeping from me since Volunteer Park? I knew that detour didn't sit right with you."

"That detour where you took care of yet another thing I failed to think of, like a way to keep your dad safe? It never even occurred to me—and he's the only family you have. We have to deal with this, because . . . I think something is wrong with me. It's like . . . without Sundial calling the shots, I make mistakes all the time. I'm a liability to you."

"Are you finished, Mr. Selective Memory? We never would have cracked the cure without you. Your sharpshooting gets us out of jams all the time. I can go on." But I can see he's not finished. He needs to get it all out.

"But you don't need any of those things from me anymore. Not now. You were eleven when you were assigned to be my partner, and none of it was your decision. Never. But that's all over. Please—the only thing I ever wanted was to see you free. And now you are."

I ignore the slight tremble that disturbs his perfect jawline. Of course this was coming. Of course it was. Because he is who he is.

I stand up. "Okay, Edward. Free. Yeah. I guess I am." And for the first time that I can remember, I do something without calculating it in advance. I drop my robe.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting undressed." I pull my shirt over my head.

"Wha—what?" He rubs the back of his neck and turns his head without exactly looking away.

I make a slow chore of folding up my shirt into a square, standing here in just my underwear. _Posture, Swan._

"It's been a rough couple of days. I see a pool, and I feel like swimming. Or dunking. Whatever." I take a deep breath. Underwear next. I curl my toes over the edge of the pool. Naked.

He leaps to his feet, toppling the patio chair. "People—people might be around. People will see you."

"People? People like you?"

I ease my way in, and it's warm. It feels amazing. I moan involuntarily. "Ahh, God. It's like a bath."

He stares at me, arms crossed in front of his chest. I stare back. I realize I'm smiling. I'm almost laughing.

"I don't understand you," he says.

"Yeah, you do. There's just one thing you don't get, Edward Cullen." I dip my head back to wet my hair. "If you don't understand that I love you more than anybody has ever loved anyone, then, no. You don't understand everything. I love you, though. Thick skull and all."

"That's your response." He unfolds his arms and crosses them again, blinking. "You love me."

"I do. I'm saying it now with no one listening but you. Freely. No assignment, no agenda. I love you."

He grins in spite of himself. "So . . . you'll be with me—by choice? We'll stay together?"

"I'm not even going to answer that."

"Just . . . say it again."

I giggle. "I love you. And I love saying it, too. I'll tell you something: I'm glad that gold is at the bottom of the ocean, because we did nothing to earn it. And I know we can be proud of everything we do from now on. _That's_ freedom. Now will you get in the water with me?"

He strips down and steps in. "Oh. It's not even that deep."

"You're safe. We'll stick with waist-deep pools from now on."

"Come here."

When his arms wrap around me in the water, I feel his heart beating next to mine.

"I thought I had to lose you. I thought for sure."

"Just let it go."

+x+x+x+x+

Later on, inside, I lie on my stomach and he runs the tips of his fingers along my back where I have the beginnings of a sunburn.

"You're going to have the weirdest tan lines," he says. "I think this is the shape of my arm where I was hugging you."

"We'll have to work on that, then. Even it out."

"Hmm." I feel his lips brush my shoulder lightly, then more insistent. "Does it sting?"

"No. It might in the morning."

"I don't want to hurt you." His voice is gravelly and low. His hands move to my hips, and his lips move between my shoulder blades. "But I don't want to wait anymore."

"Oh. Oh, God." I gasp and arch my back, trying to get closer to him. "I know."

He pulls my hair away from my neck with one hand, still kissing me roughly, and slips his other arm around my waist. His fingers are strong on my skin. "Turn over."

I roll and pull him toward me, opening my legs for him. "Edward. Yes." He crawls closer, framing my head with his arms. For the first time ever, he doesn't try to hold himself away from me. I feel everything. And for the first time ever, it feels like we're truly alone together.

"I love you so much." His hands and lips are moving everywhere, burning me up, turning me pink with blood flow and want. "I want to try to make you feel good. Right now."

"Ungh." I pull and rock. He draws moans from me with his strong fingers and his brave voice in my ear asking _is this right? Like this?_ He pants, gleams with sweat. When I finally buck and tremble under his hand, he groans against my skin, kisses me hard enough to bruise our lips, then steadies and eases closer, closer. When I finally have him inside me, I hear myself cry out, surprised by my own voice.

"Oh my God." He's breathing sharp, whispery breaths onto my face. "You good? I know it hurts." He clasps my hand.

"I'm okay. That mostly wasn't pain."

"You've never made that noise in your life before." Saying that to me seems to do something to him, and he starts moving faster, his thrusts breathless, guttural and erratic. It's all I can do to just want him closer, and _have_ him closer, over and over, rocking together. My sweet, sweet everything. I watch his face when he comes, open and unguarded, and feel the sounds he makes resonating through his chest and mine. I close my eyes and feel his weight, the strength of his arms around me, my body aching and satisfied. Maybe I'll never hear his voice vibrating through the SatCom again, but if it's between that and feeling the heat and breath of his words instead, there's no contest.

After a few moments, he props himself on one elbow, gazing down at me, passing his warm palm all along my body.

He kisses me softly on the lips, stirring syrupy standby nerve endings that must lurk below the freshly depleted ones, and then lifts his head again. He opens and closes his mouth, then grins.

"What?"

"You. Us. I—I hoped."

"Yeah. You weren't sure?" I smooth a flopping section of hair away from his forehead. It's still damp with sweat. My best friend.

"It was hard to be sure. Extraordinary circumstances and all that."

I nod. I know just what he means. He spreads his hand out below my ribs to span my belly.

"That first week, after I moved to Seattle?"

"Yeah?"

"When you found my computer?"

"Yeah?" I remember it. His screen full of wet white T-shirts.

"I'm sorry I embarrassed you."

"It wasn't that bad." I smile to think of how pink his ears were. "I guess if I ever thought of it again, I . . . pretended you were thinking of me."

He traces his knuckles across my collarbone and down between my breasts, then up again to brush my nipple lightly. "Of course I was."

"You pretty much have to say that now."

"You're forgetting I have a photographic memory. It was raining that day, wasn't it? By the skate benches. Your shirt was kind of thin."

"You gave me your hoodie."

"Exactly. To cover up. It was a confusing time."

I cackle with laughter, remembering. Realizing. That's when he gives me that long, slow picture-taking blink of his and gathers me closer. I'm making a memory, too. Maybe it's as strong and enduring as his will be.

We hole up in the hotel for days, delaying making a decision about where to go next. We check the news but are content just to know the cure is getting to people who need it. The investigation concerning Aro may take time. We subsist on room service, tipping the waiter extra when he says _Sorry for the delay, but we've been slammed since they lifted the travel advisory_. It means the danger of the epidemic has passed. We peek out the window at what must be Maui: blue skies and strange birds, planes flying overhead. The sound of the surf crashing nearby reminds me of home, but then again not.

We're ready to venture out for a dip in the ocean, so Edward flips on the T.V. and checks for a weather report.

"Hold on," I say. "Superflu update. Turn it up. I want to hear the new numbers."

A woman with shiny dark hair stands in front of the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. The inset frame floating beside her head scrolls images of an assembly line and white-coated medical professionals making a human chain to pass packages into a nursing home. She's in the middle of a report about distribution.

"_. . . what's behind the logistics of delivering the miraculous cure. Twenty million doses have been manufactured and distributed to those most at risk, with an additional seventy million on order. Reports of supply line efficiencies have been impressive, authorities say, thanks to a seamless infrastructure and nimble manufacturing practices of the Athenodora Medical Corporation. Congress and the CDC today are praising the foresight shown by Athenodora's principal shareholder, venture capitalist Aro Marcus. His financial capability to produce the desperately awaited cure, he says, was partly thanks to an aggressive strategy in the gold futures market. The perfect storm of science and calculated investment, he says, enabled him to help save thousands of lives. If he can also take that to the bank, well, that's one windfall most Americans will say is well deserved. Signing off for U.S. Nightly News."_

"Jesus Christ." Edward hits the power button. The two of us sit motionless on the edge of the bed, stunned. I can still see the ghost of Aro's image before my eyes—that last thing that flashed on the screen. His fox-like eyes, his thin lips pulled into a smug grin.

"No wonder we slipped away so easily. Of course." What did he say to us when we argued that final time? _This will not end how you imagine. _I feel sick.

Edward's face is as white as a sheet.

"He set us up. He set us up and . . . we've made him rich." He buries his face in his hands.

"Edward." I run my hands over the planes of his shoulders.

"I know." He stands up and starts pacing back and forth, already looking for his shoes.

It can't end like this. We have to go back.

+x+x+x+x+x+


	18. Chapter 18: End Behavior

**Chapter 18: End Behavior  
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It's convenient—too convenient—the way our training conditions us to compartmentalize feelings. When we have a job to do, there's no pausing to reflect about what it means and what we'd rather be doing. I've never known another way. Even now, with no one to answer to but our own consciences, there's no room for questioning.

But here's something I haven't acknowledged before now: Whatever gets partitioned away doesn't disappear. Not at all. I make myself blind to it, and then I drag it around with me like a weight. It gets heavier all the time.

Edward and I don't stop plotting from the moment we get out of bed until we reach the gate area at the airport. Packing is easy; everything we own fits into our backpack, with room to spare. We change into fresh clothes purchased at the hotel guest shop. Book flights under names that match our Canadian passports. Buy prepaid cell phones. I distract the salesperson with questions about my phone while Edward uses a display computer to hack into the Volta League data network.

With fifteen minutes left before boarding, I turn on my phone and dial the Seattle Beat, where I know Alice will be working. I listen to an earful of squeals from her, then cut to the chase: I walk her through accessing the Interpol database from her work computer. It's good to hear her voice.

"This thing says you're believed to be in Alaska. Oh my God—are you? In Alaska? Why does it say your known aliases are _Big Bird_ and _Phoenix_? This is some sort of rinky-dink Witness Protection Program if you ask me."

"I guess Rose mentioned that, huh? What else does it say? Nothing like _global notice_? Does it say 'threat level' anywhere?"

"A lot of gibberish. Oh—here. _Threat level: yellow_. Is that bad? There's a picture of you guys together that is totally photoshopped. I mean, that was your haircut three years ago! These amateurs."

Eh. I need to have a long chat with Alice. "Yeah, listen, there's a lot I need to fill you in on when I see you. But I need your help with something. Does Jasper have, like, a band van or something?"

"Yes, it's disgusting."

"He's home from tour, right?"

"Since Tuesday. Total time suck ever since then. Which you know I love. Rose threatened to disown me if I don't spend at least one day with her this weekend. Oh! You haven't heard! Emmett was kidnapped—well, his ambulance was jacked, with him in it—by scary meth dealers. They shot him in the leg and—get this—he _stitched his own wound _with just some supplies they tossed out to him."

"Did he really?"

"Yes. I mean they got it checked out at General, but everything's fine. That's some manly manliness right there. Not that Rose is crowing about it. She's been pretty quiet. I swear the shock would have turned her hair gray, if it wasn't already totally stripped of color."

"Jeez. Glad everyone's okay. Um . . . anything else I missed?"

"No. Well, only that Mike and Tyler tried to steam some Cheetos in Dr. Berty's autoclave and started a fire. Berty was pissed. He's been like a crazy person lately. There's basically no lab equipment that works anymore after the thing with the sprinklers on prom night, and there's no money, so instead of final labs he made us all write research papers on the economics of epidemics. Did you know that when Swine Flu was a big deal, the vaccine companies made like a billion dollars?"

"Actually, I did know that."

"And it came out that they had paid some so-called experts to make the CDC panic and order double-speed manufacturing. It was, like, so devious."

"Right," I say.

I talk her into gathering Jasper, Rose, and Emmett and taking a road trip to meet Edward and me in San Francisco. I convince her I still want to throw him a birthday party, Witness Protection Program be damned. She loves that type of thing. He and I may not even make it there—I just need my friends to be somewhere far away from anywhere Aro would think to look.

"Exciting! I wonder, can that van handle the 101 the whole way? It's pretty twisty. Well, we'll figure it out. Adventure. This is the whole point of Senior ditch week, right?"

"Yeah—about that. Charlie can't know about this." I squeeze my eyes shut and bite back disgust with myself. "He'd never allow it, and . . . I just want to . . . have fun."

"Girl. I knew you had a little rebel in you. Wait! _Did you_—have a little rebel in you? Or a big one? I knew it. Spill. He's big, isn't he?"

"Uh, Alice. I'll see you soon."

Edward, beside me, is making a call on his own burner phone. He's in grim authoritative mode. I hear him mentioning scoring irregularities and Adderall, an anonymous tipster, and some random drug-test records that were delayed by a computer glitch. This will knock Washington's first-place finisher and his team out of contention. We'll have to make restitution to the poor kid later, but this is necessary.

I make a second call, and as soon as I hear her voice, I switch into chipper teenager mode. "Angela, hi! What? Oh, I know. Sorry I didn't say anything. Hah, high school rumors. That's wild. No—Edward's grandma was in the hospital."

Edward looks at me, just finishing up his call. He nods and gives me a thumbs-up.

"So, listen. I have crazy news. Remember that little speech we all heard at Statewide about how the runner-up team gets a go at Nationals if the champs are disqualified? Well—how soon can you be at the airport? Call Eric and Ben. We're going to Vegas."

+x+x+x+x+x+

Ever since little Riley Biers had his legendary come-from-behind win in the middle of a nervous breakdown four years ago, the national Volta League championship has been a media circus. The spectacle of young nerds straining themselves to the limits to prove obscure skills is interesting to outsiders, I guess, and the possibility that one of us might flip out adds an element of—what? Surprise? Schadenfreude? Who knows. It's a thing.

For our purposes, it means getting in front of a live feed on a major cable network. If I have a camera on me, I should be safe from Aro intervening in a public way. There are things I can say—coded messages that send signals to other agents, inside information about unusual patterns in Aro's purchases and the spread of the contagion that should at least get people to look into our claim.

It's a total crapshoot, but we need to try it.

+x+x+x+x+x+

The chain of flights from Maui will take almost twelve hours, plus there's a time difference that means we'll meet the rising sun in Vegas. We should be using the time to plan contingencies, but Edward has started sulking. He slumps and stares at the newspaper in his hands as if he wants to bore holes in it.

I take it from him and shove it into the seatback pocket in front of me. I've done my share of angry staring, too. The front-page photo now burned into my memory is a shot of Aro at a press conference speaking about drug manufacturing as a win-win public-private partnership. His PR agent hovers at his elbow. It's the London journalist we'd sent our testimony to—the one we'd been betting on to publish an exposé. He's wearing the sort of finely tailored expensive suit that only a sellout could afford.

"I know what you're doing, and there's no point to it."

"What?"

"Playing Monday morning quarterback. Beating yourself up. We can't go back in time and change things."

"Well, we're not talking about a blown field goal, here. More than nine thousand people died, and the man who killed them is rich because of us."

"Well, millions more are _not _going to die because of you. And don't you dare lecture me," I say. "I was just as blind as you."

He closes his eyes and frowns. That passes for an apology, under the circumstances.

He rolls sideways in his seat, still slumping, eyes cast down. "How far back do you think it goes? Was Shelley in on it? Dr. Berty, giving you those old laptops?"

"No." I shake my head. "I think the resistance and Shelley's story was legit. She gave her life to keep our cover from being blown. And Berty was just as blindsided as us—according to Alice, he's as broke as ever, and he's even getting them riled up about manipulation of the CDC for profit. I think Aro caught on at some point and found a way to turn it to his advantage."

"By positioning himself as the go-to pharma supplier. And investing in gold." He rubs his thumbs over his brows. "By giving us just enough leeway that we could build a credible case and trigger outbreak-suppression spending at the CDC."

"Exactly." Now I feel like sulking. I stare at my hands in my lap and try to summon the inner strength it will take to drag this bitter freight around with me. Heavier all the time. There's a bright pink flower dangling from the waist tie of my gift store dress, and it suddenly looks ridiculous to me. I tear it off and move to stuff it in the seat pocket in front of me. Edward takes it and pretends to sniff it.

"Don't start destroying frilly, pretty things," he says. "It's a waste of good rage."

"It doesn't suit me."

"It doesn't suit your mood at this moment. But your mood isn't you. And, anyhow, I happen to like it." He slips it into his pocket.

"Sounds like Aro hasn't put out an Interpol notice on us, at least. And anyhow they think we're in Alaska," I say.

"I can't see why he'd bother. We've served our purpose."

"We've served _his_ purpose—not our own. And he knows it. Don't underestimate him."

Edward looks at me finally, a glimmer of interest in his expression.

"What's our purpose?"

"To expose him. To end Sundial."

"And?"

I slip my hand underneath his where we share an armrest and study his face. What is he looking for?

He grips my hand tightly. He twists in his seat and reaches across to stroke the side of my face.

As soon as I feel the warmth of his skin, I understand what he means. What's worth abandoning the place we were in for just a handful of days? The sunny, wide-open future we'd finally let ourselves see, only to walk away? I need to say it out loud, for both of us—or we'll both be tempted to bail on this whole plot as soon as we get off the plane.

I pull him to me and feel his breath on my skin. I realize the tension lurking in his eyes never went away—not in Hawaii, not now. He has his own densely packed mental compartment filled with horrors neither of us want leaking out in our old age. The ghosts of every hit we every carried out. The accidental ones, too. And Shelley. "To be able to live with ourselves, Edward. For the rest of our lives we need to live with what we choose to do today."

There are contingencies we should be brainstorming, but we spend the rest of the flight curled together like honeymooners. He still smells like salty ocean air and coconut oil.

+x+x+x+x+x+

The scene at Caesar's Palace is controlled chaos. Signage is posted everywhere—official Volta League logos, way-finding placards, and flags announcing the event sponsors, including a massive silk banner advertising Aro's Athenodora Medical Corporation. _Proud to Support the Future of Innovation_, it reads. Aro is never one to waste an opportunity. In fact, it's possible that he's here.

Edward's hand in mine starts to feel clammy, and I remind him that literally every square foot of any major casino hotel is under constant surveillance. For once, that's in our favor. And even Aro doesn't have the money it would take to buy off the bosses here.

We worm our way through the crowds of pale-faced teenagers and proud parents. There's some scrambling at registration due to our last-minute replacement situation—just as we'd planned. We need the element of surprise.

The coordinator hands me a rubber-banded bundle of sharpened pencils. "Good luck," she says.

Ten minutes later, I'm immersed in the qualifying sprints. These are a snap now that I have no reason to tamp down what I can do. Set theory, ciphering, proofs. Teenage boys—they are almost all boys—fall apart all around me, blindsided, breaking down in tears of frustration. Edward follows me from event to event, watching my back and tracking social media buzz on his phone. A big audience helps us.

Edward pulls me aside and retrieves my pink cloth flower from his pocket. He uses a paper clip to attach it to my hair. "Play up the girly angle. Twitter is eating it up. They're calling you the _Long Division Lolita_."

That's so offensive it makes my eyes roll almost all the way back in my head. Edward gives me a sympathetic grimace. "I know."

"I mean, long division is for kindergarteners."

He snorts. "Try fourth grade."

"Well, still. Is my picture on there? I mean, what if my dad . . . " I'm worried about Charlie coming across it somehow—not that he uses Twitter.

He nods. "I called Carlisle. He's got your dad out at the prison hospital today, training the guards on CPR kits."

When I finally cross paths with Angela and the others, it's in the team round, where we wind up taking the bronze. The only round that really matters to me is the Individual Masters, where the responses are verbal and the drama means live media coverage.

I glimpse Sam and Leah at the back of the crowd during the team results announcement and pull Edward aside as soon as we break to warn him.

"I know," he says. "We talked when you were in the team round. They started digging when both of our SatComs dropped offline at the same time. Evidently Aro's response fell just short of believability. Bree's the only unknown entity at this point."

"Can we trust them?"

"Something makes me think we can. Look." He opens his fist to show me a loose molar pickup and a stick of gum. "Just keep it in your cheek. It won't fit your tooth, but the charger is good. Your listening element should be powered up in fifteen."

"Where did you get it?"

"Jacob Black, if you'll believe this, invited me to punch him in the jaw. Begged me, really."

My eyes widen. "Did you clean it off?"

"What do you think? Like I'd let you put his gross cooties in your actual mouth." He cracks a slight smile, and for the first time today, it seems authentic. "You'll be able to hear the all-agents wire. Leah hacked in, and she'll tap you through when the time is right."

I chew the gum, then fold the pickup inside and tuck it into my cheek.

Finally, it's showtime. I'm ushered into a bright auditorium lit for television, alongside my fellow finalists. We get dusted with makeup. We confirm the spelling of our name placards. Large monitors are placed along the aisles, including one showing the offstage Comfort Room. It's a place where eliminated contestants are taken and assessed for mental trauma, and apparently that makes for great television. I find Edward in the audience, through the glare, signaling to me from the second row that everything is going as planned.

The official test proctor has just finished introducing all of us and summarizing key rules when the Volta League coordinator walks on stage and whispers in his ear.

The proctor clears his throat. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special treat for you today. He's been a behind-the-scenes administrator of the Volta League for decades, humbly committed to nurturing the next generation of math and science talent. But as of this week, he's known around the world as the man who put down the Superflu. Please give a warm welcome to your surprise Master of Ceremonies for today's event . . . Mr. Aro Marcus."

In the roar of the crowd, the sound of my gasping breath is drowned out. Edward leaps to his feet, accidentally initiating a standing ovation. His face is stony, cautious. I try to compose myself. We're on camera, I remind myself. He can't do anything to me on camera, in front of all these witnesses.

"Hearty congratulations to the contestants," Aro says. He's looking straight at me. Straight through me. His lips stretch into a grin that matches his cold, beady eyes. "Having made it this far certainly must feel like a triumph. You must be quite eager to see who will emerge as victor."

I focus on controlling my breathing. I can do this. I just need to get my codewords out. What's the worst he can do—cut power to my mic on live T.V.?

Aro signals to a person who is waiting in the wings. When I see her, I begin to understand that he does have a plan of his own.

"Please welcome," he says to the crowd, "my intern, Bree." The audience chuckles—_how can someone so young be an intern?_ She takes a seat at the table piled with question sets beside his podium. She's wearing a stiff wool blazer that looks three sizes too large for her. It has an Athenodora logo pinned to the lapel.

He goes on, playing to the crowd. "I joke, of course. But my young friend is something of a prodigy when it comes to vaccines, and I dare say she will be on this stage next year at this time, competing in Volta's newly added category in epidemiology and biochemistry. There is much enthusiasm nationally for this topic of late."

When the applause dies down, he adds, "After the competition today, I'm grateful that the networks have made time available for a brief demonstration and public health message concerning Athenadora's brand new Superflu vaccination, which has just been approved as a complement to the fast-acting cure. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

I take another calming breath and wipe my clammy palms on my sundress. All the while, Aro has been shooting me pointed glances that make me believe the small syringe Bree now displays on her table is something I should be concerned about. There is, in fact, something Aro can do to me in front of all these cameras. Bree is good, and she's fast. She can prick me with whatever is in that thing.

I can't risk glancing into the crowd to see if Edward is piecing this together; I don't want him to think I'm nervous, or who knows what he'll do.

Aro stares me down with one last threatening glare, and a diagram flashes on our screens. The final round begins.

"In the set of seven coplanar lines displayed, what is the measure in degrees of—"

"May I have a terminology clarification, please?"

He nods, as I know the rules require. I don't intend to waste a single moment.

"I just wonder whether the large T.V. audience today realizes that our division of a circle into 360 units called degrees dates back several thousand years to the Babylonian astronomers, who were also responsible for bringing us the sundial?"

"Ah. Thank you, Miss Swan. How good of you to help us celebrate the ancient masters. More of a history lesson than a terminology clarification, though."

"Sorry for geeking out. I just like the idea of a sundial, that's all. It's so old school. And yet, not obsolete, even here in the U.S." The audience laughs, indulging me. They are on my side. They don't know I'm using language chosen to make legit agents around the country sit up and listen.

Aro glares daggers at me and blinks. "Are you quite well, Miss Swan?"

"Just excited. Carry on."

He finishes the question and another contestant answers. Aro rubs his temple. I wonder if he's hearing what I'm hearing—a smattering of people checking in on the all-agents wire. I hear them repeat the word _sundial_ over and over, their voices more questioning and cautious than outraged at this point.

I glance at Edward in the crowd. He can't hear what I hear—of the two of us, I'm the only one with a working transponder right now. He doesn't know that the plan is working. He is tapping out messages on his phone and shaking his head at me. He seems to be furious. He looks back and forth between Bree and me, sitting to Aro's left in her little circle of spotlight. He can see that Bree is Aro's weapon, lying in wait. It's all he's focused on.

Does Edward think I'll go that far? I visualize the scene—Bree pricking me with the needle under the guise of passing me a note from the judges' panel. A cold sweat breaks out on my skin when I realize . . . that isn't enough to deter me. It isn't among the scenarios we planned for, but is it acceptable, if it exposes Aro to scrutiny? I close my eyes and say a silent apology to Edward for what I am prepared to do.

A new image appears on the screen.

"Next question. The chart displayed provides actuarial estimates for life expectancies as determined by current age and economic status for five demographic groups, as well as cost-of-living and GDP projections. Calculate the net value or cost to demographic D of a five-year increase in the average life expectancy of demographic B."

This is a bizarre tactic. Does he think I'll have a change of heart based on the economics behind his genocidal plot? Is he grasping at straws?

I buzz in. "I object to the question on ethical grounds, sir. The use of such calculations of the value of life by medical insurers was forbidden years ago—something called _Operation Onyx Purge_." I enunciate and speak loudly. The other contestants stare at me as if I've lost my mind. I, however, breathe a sigh of relief. I've just mentioned an alarm code that every agent within earshot of any television or scanning device is programmed to respond to with urgent action. The venue will be surrounded by deep-cover agents—many of them ex-Sundial—within minutes.

With the audience murmuring, Aro ignores me and lets another contestant respond.

I let a couple of questions pass me by, listening as the voices coming across the wire in my head grow stronger. They are breathless now, springing into action according to ancient protocols, some calling for all agents to tune into this live T.V. program to observe an _embedded resource_—me—and others calling out geographic coordinates of this location. I hear Leah's voice, then Esme's. I hear the voices of several older people, one that might be Dr. Berty, and another who sounds like Tyler's dad, the one who sold Carlisle and Esme their house. Then Emily, followed by Sam's voice choked with emotion.

It's time. I take a breath and buzz in, having barely heard the question Aro just asked. "The product of combining an infectious molecule such as Joham with the inverse of EclipseX results in an infinite acceleration. This method was famously invoked to rationalize covert suppression of promising cancer-immunity research in the Stefan-Vladimir lab years ago. Your young virologists might find the history revealing."

Now I'm just dropping clues anywhere I can, hoping some enterprising investigator will pick up the trail. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Edward stand and storm out of the room.

Aro frowns at me. I can hear the audience murmuring. "That is . . . incorrect. Incoherent, in fact."

The agents have heard it, though. The flurry of ten-codes is chaotic, almost impossible to follow. Another contestant rings in with the correct answer. I look at Aro, and only Aro. We're in a game of chicken now, and he knows it.

I see him flip his question key over. He's ad-libbing. "Word problem. A three-ounce hummingbird inherits a nest egg ten times as large as she is. Assistance from a much bigger bird, we'll call _Variable E,_ is needed in order to hatch a viable nestling. How large a nest egg can be hatched by E working in concert with the hummingbird?"

Bree, next to him, sits up straight when she hears her cover name. She narrows her eyes.

I ring in. "The answer is D—not enough information is contained in the question. Variable E is an unknown quantity."

"Yes it is. The point goes to Swan." He nods and grins, narrowing his eyes. "I'm pleased to see you know to never mistake a variable for a constant."

This is one ploy that will never work—implying that Edward is variable, corruptible. I wish I could roll my eyes with Edward, but he's left the auditorium. It doesn't matter. I can see figures slipping in through the doors at the back of the crowd. Agents. No matter what happens to me, Aro is surrounded. I hear Leah in my head. _Agents alert. Quiet please. On-site audio broadcast is in play. _

Aro frowns, then consults his prompter. "Contestants, the next question contains an audiovisual clue."

What appears on the screen is something no one expects. Instead of a diagram or vector model, a string of words spools across the screen—a transcription of voices we are all now hearing over the PA. My voice, in fact. Mine and Aro's.

_You designed a biological weapon and you're using your security clearance to spread it. You're a traitor to your country—to humanity. You're killing everyone over the age of seventy-five! These people are defenseless and innocent!_

_These people are decrepit! They are nothing but a drain on society—nothing to give, nothing to contribute. _

_Go to hell, Aro. This is ending now. _

_Have you forgotten who I am? What I am capable of?_

_Is that a threat? _

_Shame if anything were to happen to that gymnasium full of children. Wiring gets frayed, you know. Fires start all the time in these old buildings._

I scramble away from my seat behind the contestants' table and try to keep Aro in plain view. He's glancing all around the auditorium like a caged animal, and I can hear the telltale sound of field agents' service weapons clicking smoothly into ready mode. There are lots of them. Many semi-retired agents take jobs in private security, and Vegas is the world capital of private security. Bree sits paralyzed, listening. I'm vaguely aware of the audience murmuring, then cameras flashing.

Suddenly Aro yanks Bree to her feet and swipes the syringe from the table in front of her. In a heartbeat, his arm is wrapped around her shoulders and he's holding the needle near her neck. I hear agents barking _Hostage at risk! Hold fire!_ in my ear. I hear myself shouting _No. _The crowd is silent.

He hisses into Bree's ear, his headset microphone still broadcasting to the full auditorium and beyond. "I believe Miss Swan knows this is no Superflu vaccine, little Hummingbird," he says. "But why don't you make it very clear for her what her further aggression will drive me to do."

Bree closes her eyes. "It's not a vaccination, Bella," she says. The needle glinting in the stage lights is duplicated across the dozen monitors lining the auditorium walls. She twists her neck so her mouth is closer to Aro's microphone. She wants everyone to hear this. "That syringe is full of . . . saline."

Relief washes over me. She's telling the truth, I know it. He knows it, too. A sickly pallor washes over his face, and the needle tumbles to the ground, but he doesn't drop his arm from around her neck. For some reason, he seems frozen in place. Drops of sweat roll down his temples.

"I still have the syringe he wanted me to use, Bella," she says. "I'm holding it against his thigh right now. If he moves a muscle, he knows what's coming." She raises her voice, managing to sound impressively loud and clear for a ten-year-old. "Agents, protocol green. Take custody of this traitor. With caution, please."

This is everything I hoped for and feared, all at once. The shock is almost too much. I don't let myself give in until I see Aro surrender to a swarm of police, his slim white wrists offered up in defeat. As I sink to the ground, exhausted, I sense Edward next to me, strong and solid.

+x+x+x+x+x+

When I come to, I'm in the cushiony Comfort Room, bundled on a sofa with a cool cloth on my forehead. The T.V. cameras that were in here before are gone. I look at Edward, seated in a chair across the room, and take a deep breath. Our covers are blown, the entire program exposed. This was our option of last resort, but it was an option.

"Where is everyone? Don't we need to be debriefed?"

"I barred the door," he says. "They can wait."

"Thank you. For hacking in and deploying the audio file."

His eyebrows peak up. "Yeah, well. It was a simple sound booth. And anyhow, you didn't leave me with much of a choice."

"I know."

"You were practically baiting him into subduing you with deadly force. What were you thinking?"

He knows what I was thinking. And he has a right to be angry about it.

"There's a chance I had the antidote in my system."

"You're sure about that?"

"I said _a chance_. Calculated risk, remember? It's my job."

"Well, you're fired."

He nudges me over and lies on the sofa with me. I can feel his heartbeat pounding, calming gradually. He holds me like he thinks a tornado gust is about to blow me away.

"Is Bree okay?"

"She's fine. She's with some counselors, for now. Angela went with her." He picks up the remote control for a T.V. set in the corner. "And Aro . . . is in federal custody. Probably forever."

We watch together as the cable news recaps the scene from earlier for viewers. Even with the sound on mute, I can follow along. I see myself sitting in the long row of contestants, Aro and Bree to the far left. I see confusion register on everyone's face but my own when the recording starts to play, and then the chaotic burst of scrambling. I don't remember shielding the other contestants behind me, but it looks that way on the video.

I bury my face in Edward's chest when I see the footage of Aro threatening Bree. I hated witnessing it, and I don't want to see it again. Edward nudges me after a moment. "You should see this."

As Aro is led away in cuffs on one side of the split screen, I see Bree on the other half of the screen turn to face the cameras at the front of the stage. A semi-circle of people stands poised to help her, but she must have said something to make them hold back. She's still holding the syringe Aro would have had her "inoculate" me with. She drops to her knees and pulls a BioSafe canister from an inner pocket of her oversized blazer. A fat red strawberry rolls around inside it. The cameras zoom in as she pushes the syringe tip through the one-way rubber seal on one end, cinches the safety lock, then plunges the syringe contents into the fruit. It mushrooms into a gray blob instantly, turns black, and explodes into dust.

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh."

I know even before the camera zooms in on the BioSafe indicator display what it will say. This is the Benito molecule. The world's most dangerous biological weapon.

"God, Edward. I'm so sorry. I just knew we had this chance, and . . . I thought it was a manageable risk. He would have had her kill me on live T.V.?"

"He had a ready-made motive all worked out. Revenge for her parents dying. They found a package in his car—a manifesto, mimicking her handwriting and everything."

"Charlie? Oh, God, Charlie." I sit up, start patting pockets for my phone.

"He's on a plane with Carlisle. He'll be here by dinner. Rose and Alice and the gang are meeting us here instead of San Francisco, and then as soon as you and I debrief we're all going to take a road trip somewhere we've never been. For my birthday. How does that sound?"

I flop back down again and pull Edward tighter, tears of relief and regret leaking out of me. He kisses my ear.

"Do you forgive me? For my risk-taking?"

"Let's have it be the last time, okay?"

"It's really over, isn't it?"

"Forever."

I hope that's true. I feel something lumpy under his jacket where I'm squeezing him and pull it out. It's the Hemingway book Shelley had given us—but a fresh copy, barely used—with a pen tucked to hold his place.

"Another one?"

"Airport bookstore. It's actually a decent book."

I flip through to see what he's underlined this time.

_As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans._

This makes me giggle. "You've never had oysters. Or white wine."

"I don't know what I was waiting for. Sounds like my jam." He laughs quietly, and I feel it in his chest.

And then: _We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other._

I feel some of the worry leave me. A little lighter now. I'll have to get used to this.

"What do we do now?"

"Well," he says, "Our road trip. Then there's an ex-agents restoration module we can take advantage of this summer, on a little island on the border with Canada. Then senior year, I guess. And in the immediate near term, there are reporters out there waiting to interview us."

"Not yet." I kiss him softly, drowsily, and weave my fingers into his hair.

He holds me close, and I can just make out the beachy scent still saturating his skin. "No. Not yet."

There's plenty of time for interviews and debriefings later. Right now, staring up at a ceiling painted with a blue sky and fake clouds in a casino hotel meeting room, a table full of juice boxes, granola bars, and chilled towels within reach, I don't want to do anything but dream about my future. My future with Edward—my best friend, the love of my life, who likes to mix sweet and salty snacks, has a gift for languages, is starting to mix Ernest Hemingway in with his comic books, and from this moment on is, in all other respects, a normal teenage kid.

Just like me.

THE END

**AN:** Thanks so much for reading! This was a lot of fun for me (although, lesson learned: don't start a very plot-heavy story unless you have time to complete it all in one push). I had a lot of help on this story (as always!) from happymelt, faireyfan, and midsouthmama. If you see any of these ladies around the internet, always trust their advice.


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